Day 788: 5 Minute Freewrite: Tuesday - Prompt: fern

Mrs. Onyx Baxter, wife of Rev. Baxter of the Church of the Midst of Life, took planning out the seasonal yard choices for the church quite seriously. The back yard was becoming a ministry all its own, a kind of peaceful oasis in the middle of busy downtown Big Loft, and one might find the city's guttermost to the uttermost passing through the church and more and more often going into the yard to pray or sit or whatever.

Now that the cool half of the year had arrived, Mrs. Baxter and Mrs. Gordon, the wife of Rev. Gordon, had to do some deciding, and this year they had decided on creating a fern garden in a shady portion of the yard.

“We will have a time getting them through next summer,” Mrs. Baxter had said to Mrs. Gordon, “but they are a beautiful and heavy-duty investment for the fall and winter and spring, and they will be a pretty background to our spring flowers.”

“I think you are right … I just love the patterning in the leaves of ferns as the different ones grow out,” Mrs. Gordon said. “God's own emerald lattice work is what they are.”

“The big ferns will give us some privacy in here, too,” Mrs. Baxter said as she put her long, dark hand to a shovel.

“Right,” said Mrs. Gordon as she sighed. “Now that we have all these upper-class survivors from the Ridgeline Fire who don't want to be seen looking like just another tired old White person like me, more of them will come in here if they can't be seen from the street and even by most at the church.”

Mrs. Baxter shook her head sadly.

“Rich homeless people,” she said. “A lot of people in my community are not unhappy that this has happened – that the survivors of the Ridgeline Fire are learning what it is to be dispossessed instead of doing the dispossessing, to be the subject of mockery and hatred instead of being the ones instigating it for profit. Still, whoever the Lord sends here, we have to try to help – big ferns and all.”

So, on this particular day, folks were coming through to help with planting the ferns and other garden choices for the cool half of the year. It was quite a sight to see in Big Loft … people out of every ethnicity, age, and background across Lofton County, staggering their lunch hours to come help in some way.

Yet this was just another day at the Church in the Midst of Life, and continually what drew the attention of passers-by and drew many into see what in the world was going on … and thus to find a hint of what would be going on, and what had been going on, ever since God decided to redeem humans – all types of humans – to Himself in Christ out of every tribe and nation in the world … .