Useless! It’s not exactly a term of endearment, is it? No, it’s more like an epithet you growl, say, at your computer, when you get that message yet again: Microsoft has encountered a problem and must shut down, as in, “you useless piece of junk!” Or it might be something you say about those amazing ginzo knives you fell for on a cable TV ad—you know, the ones that were yours for only 19.95 plus shipping and handling? Useless stuff!

I dare say that being called “useless” is not something to which any of us would aspire. Ours is a society that stresses utility, productivity. When productivity is down, it’s never good news. We’re conditioned from an early age to make something of ourselves, to make good use of our time, talents and resources, to always be doing something productive. And it’s not just our work or school lives that are so driven. We can put any number of shoulds on ourselves about what we are supposed to do, accomplish, achieve.

And this pressure to produce, to “make something of something” even spills over to those activities we pursue simply for enjoyment. Last week I was talking to some of the Stitchers—the group of knitters, quilters, and so forth that meets here every Wednesday—recently re-dubbed, at Mark’s suggestion, the Seamsters Union. They have quite a lot of fun together and they are quite productive. Yet one of them was bemoaning the fact that she had so much stockpiled fabric she had never used that it made her feel guilty, that she would probably die with tons of fabric that she’d never done anything with.

That conversation made me think of my Mother. An accomplished seamstress, she, too, would have thought, “What’s the use of fabric that’s never made into something?” And yet she stockpiled fabric, too. I remember a fabric sale we went to when I was a teenager. We bought so many pieces of fabric we staggered under their weight. It took us years to make it all up into something for one or the other of us. Or, I should say, almost all of it. There was one piece we just couldn’t quite decide how to use—an apricot and black windowpane plaid, for those of you who are into that sort of thing. It wasn’t enough for a suit; too much for just a skirt. At one point we decided that a jacket for me would be just the thing—with contrasting black collar and cuffs, worn with a black skirt—now that would make quite a nice effect. But that was around the time I entered seminary. I never seemed to be home long enough to break out the sewing machine. And somehow the years went by and that fabric never got made. It just languished in a drawer. And, then, when I thought of it again, we discovered that the moths had gotten to it. It was riddled with holes, useless. My mother felt the waste of that fabric as a personal reproach.

But it’s not only things in our culture that mustn’t go to waste, turned to good use. But minutes and hours, too. We are forever multi-tasking, utilizing our time blocks. We even schedule our weekends to exhaustion, with hobbies, sports, social engagements. And our vacations, too—if we even take the vacation coming to us—one in five Americans doesn’t. We feel that a day spent doing nothing is a day wasted. No, uselessness is not a virtue in our culture.

And yet contemplate that Taoist tale. That useless tree, good for nothing—no lumber, no tea, no medicine—was, at last, good for giving shade to a tired old man on a hot and muggy day. But if that tree had been useful, it, like its neighbors, would have long since been cut down. And Chuang Tzu would have had no place to rest his weary bones. A useless tree was just what he needed.

Are there virtues to being useless? Maybe it is all a matter of where we find ourselves. The American journalist, Mignon McLaughlin, once quipped: “A car is useless in New York, essential everywhere else. The same with good manners.” Maybe what seems useless is simply a matter of perspective. Consider weeds, for example. Did you ever stop to wonder what’s the difference between a weed and a wildflower. A weed by definition is useless, but wild flowers can be a delight to the senses, as we are well aware here in a state known for its wild flowers. But what’s the difference? A naturalist put it this way: If you don’t want it in your yard, it’s a useless weed. But if you can enjoy its bloom in someone else’s field, you esteem it as a wildflower. And think of the infinite variety of wild-flowers. Surely in a purely utilitarian universe, a few different species would have sufficed. But just in the state of Texas there are over 5000 species of flowering weeds, or depending upon your perspective, wildflowers. Why, there’s more than enough for every letter of the alphabet!

For A there are asters—meadow, golden, arrowhead, and tansy—some 60 varieties in Houston alone to tickle your fancy

B is for all the blues—blue bonnets, of course, but also blue larkspur, blue waterleaf, blue sage—and not just for blue, for broomweed and buttercup, too

C for cloth-of-god and crimson clover, for coreopsis, over and over

D for dandelions and daisies—camphor and huisache, saw-leaf, and lazy-sleepy daisy, too—

E for plants that eschew repose—evening star and evening primrose

F for foxglove, frostweed and allthat mislead—such as false dragonhead, false garlic, false ragweed

G is for gayfeather and gerardia and goat’s rue—once said to make Cherokee children strong and true

H for hempweed and horse-nettle and henbit—better than snake bit, we’d construe

I for iris and ironweed and indigo—plains wild, and wild blue

J for jimmy-weed and joint-weed—what a pair

K for knapweed and knotweed, which despite their names, are surprisingly fair

L for lance-leaf loosestrife, lupines, and lilies

M for mustard and marshmallow, milkweed and mayapple—a veritable feast—for the eyes at least

N for nightshade and nettle

O for onion, oxeye and oyster plant—it really can be consumed, in salads or cooked like legumes

P for pinks and pansies, paper-flowers and peas

Q for Queen Anne’s Lace, upon which butterflies seize

R is for rattlebush, redbud, and rose colored palafoxia

S for sunflowers and susans, for, pretty as they sound, snow-on-the-mountain and sand-in-your-shoes—and sand lilies and sand bells, also, if you so choose

T for tickseed, thistle and twist flower, and all those Texas natives—from Texas aster to Texas virgin’s bower—and lots more in between

U could have me stumped but botanical nomenclature comes to the scene, with Utricularia radiatta—also known as floating bladderwort—now there’s a name back at ya!

V that’s no stretch—for vervain and violets and many kinds of vetch

W for wood sorrel and winecup and wild chrysanthemum

X might present a problem but for those botanicals—xanthisma and xanthocephalum

Y—that’s easy, too—for there are a host of yellows—daisies to thistles, flaxes to stars, even puffs

And so we arrive at Z—not just for zinnias but also zarzamora and zizias and other fine stuff

And so you see—there really are wildflowers—weeds if you must—that run the gamut from A to Z!

(Thank you for indulging me with that poem of mine.) Seriously. What useful purpose does this multiplicity serve? Why, all these weeds? Sure, many have been put to good use by human beings in various ways - to provide food, erosion control, medicines. But is that the purpose for which they came into existence—to be put to use? Or is their purpose simply to be, to live out their lives as a vessel for life, and by so being, become a grace of nature? The gospel of Matthew advises: “Consider the lilies of the field; they neither toil nor spin; yet, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”

And what of us? Are we meant to live in such a pressure of life, always doing, always producing, always pushing ourselves to make something of our time and talents? Is that the sole purpose to which we were born? Or is our purpose, at least partially, to also be a vessel for life, a channel of grace?

The Chinese Taoist sage, Chuang Tzu, to whom the tale of the Useless Tree is accredited also wrote: “Produce! Get results! Make money! Make changes! Anything to hide your despair.” Is our striving to be of use all necessary? Or, does some of it, as Chuang Tzu suggests, have a desperate quality to it?

You see, I wonder what is at the root of all this doing and striving. I wonder, do I—do all of us—need to be doing something useful in order to feel okay about ourselves? Do we feel unworthy if we are not producing? Do we substitute doing something, anything, for a sense of self worth? Are we afraid that if we were to stand still and do nothing, we would be overcome with yawning emptiness?

Summertime, and the living, according to the song, is easy. Perhaps this is a time to cultivate the virtues of being useless, a time to allow ourselves to just be—if only for a few stolen days. And then perhaps we might recapture a sense of our part in the interdependent web of existence—and thus feel our own imitable worth as a vessel for life. Maybe part of the reason we are here is, as Annie Dillard maintains, to witness creation so that creation need not play to an empty house. And in witnessing creation maybe we can fill our souls with assurance and peace enough to sustain us for all the work that is required. Summer can be a time when we slow down enough to listen to the spirit that undergirds all, to, as James Stephens writes, “allow our thoughts to bubble up and break, spilling a sea, a limpid lake, into the soul as they go.”

Perhaps we need to be useless for awhile to explore our deeper motivations; to remember what is important—like our families, the bonds of community, the civility of neighbors, and not the least, the spiritual life. We need some down time to celebrate the gifts of creation, to be overcome by wonder rather than weariness, by enlightenment rather than exhaustion. Theodore Roethke described enlightenment thus: “to take counsel of the crab and the sea urchin, to recall the falling of small waters, to merge, like the bird, with the bright air—God has taken my heaviness away; being, not doing, is my first job.”

Perhaps enlightenment could be ours—if only momentarily—if we allow ourselves to stop and let the stillness carry us so that we truly look and let ourselves be arrested by the sight of—what? Why, wild flowers, even grass might do, if we are mindful enough. Mary Oliver, in her poem by that name, asserts: Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. It was what I was born for—to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world - to instruct myself over and over in joy, and acclamation. Nor am I talking about the exceptional, . . . the very extravagant—but of the ordinary, the common, the daily presentations. Oh, good scholar, I say to myself, how can you help but grow wise with such teachings as these—the untrimmable light of the world, the ocean's shine, the prayers that are made out of grass?

Summer, which in Houston, can be too hot to do any more than required, can be a time when we come home to our souls. A time when we reclaim our worth simply as creatures, as part of a natural world that moves to its own rhythms; a time when we might kneel down in grass and feel blessed; a time when we might touch the hem of the sacred in the blossom of a flower, the trill of a bird, the twinkle of a star. Summer can give us the quiet to remember our part in the world and the life that flows through us all.

And, if you are one of those who avoids the out of doors in summer, who would apply Sue Monk Kid’s injunction for South Carolina to Houston, who says that “when the heat index goes over 100 degrees, you have to go to bed—it’s practically the law,” then contemplating some now useless item from your past might suffice.

When my mother died and my siblings and I cleaned out her house, distributed her possessions, one of the things I claimed was that piece of apricot and black windowpane plaid. It was still there, moth holes and all. And it was still useless—not even the cleverest of pattern placements could redeem enough of it for a garment. But I keep that piece of useless fabric even now. And every once in awhile I take it out and hold it in my hands and let it carry me back to times of delight and grace spent in my mother’s presence and I let my mind wander and before I know it an hour may have passed and I have nothing to show for it except a piece of moth eaten fabric— that, and a heart filled with sweet memory and blessed assurance of the spirit of life that endures even sorrow and loss.

Oh, please don’t get me wrong. I am not advocating a complete work moratorium; a cessation of striving and seeking, even if I thought such were possible. I know, as do you, that the human drive to produce, to make something of something, has given us the achievements of civilization, the enormous benefits we enjoy. Nor am I advocating a life of pure contemplation, of non-action. There are too many things that cry out for our attention; too many problems that beset our society. Indeed, futurists predict that the pressure to produce will only increase, that the time is coming when we will all have to work harder and longer with less, if life as we know it on this planet is to survive in any sustainable fashion. Futurists also warn that the speed of change is accelerating such that we will have to adapt at an ever increasing pace just to stay abreast. If those predictions are true, then all of us will need very fat souls, a plenitude of spiritual resources, all the more.

And if we aim to find sustainable solutions to the problems that beset us and equitable means of managing resources, how are we to do that if we don’t have a deep and abiding sense of the worth of all? And how are we to know the worth of all if we don’t know our own worth as vessels of life? We need, as a species, an appreciation of being just as much as doing. It is, in part, the attitude that utility, productivity, is all that matters which has led us to some of our present dilemmas. And I am speaking not just of the depletion of the natural world, but the exploitation of people as well. The rationale of pure utility when extended to its extreme logical conclusion leads to a view of people as fungible, expendable. If, in our approach to the future, we would attend to the lives of the poor, the dispossessed—and we must—we will need a profound appreciation for our irreducible interconnection; a soulful, spiritually grounded, sense of the life that pulses through all.

Summer can be a time when we ask ourselves: what gods are we serving? The gods of production and utility? Or a god of something larger—to know oneself as a part of an awesome creation? If you were to take the measure of your life, would it all be scored by what you had produced, what you had done? Or would some it be scored by the wonder you have known, by the love of the life which flowed through the vessel of your soul, by the grace with which you embraced the life which was yours, even in its sorrow, even in its pain?

Mary Oliver, to quote that modern day sage again, has written that when death comes like the hungry bear in autumn or like an iceberg between the shoulder blades, she doesn’t want to wonder if she made of her life something particular; rather, she says, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement; I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. And therefore, she says, I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular, . . . and each body a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth. No, she says, don’t measure me by utility. When it's over, I want to say: all my life I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

May we all find some time this summer to come home to our souls, to simply be, to learn again that utility is not the measure of our worth—but rather the life we embrace, the life that flows through all.