Lenten Reflection by Mary Memmott
March 7, 2017
Tikkun olam . . . or why I have a patched-up watering can
I have two watering cans for my garden — one is green, plastic, whole, and makes a nice shower from its nozzle. The other is red, metallic, less even in its showering, and patched with “mod podge”. My favorite is the patched one. I have my reasons.
My reasons go back to the unseasonably warm spring of 2012. That year I was able to plant pansies with my students — an explosion of color, near the entryway to the parking lot — right after April break. Unfortunately, the reason we were planting flowers was very sad — one of their classmates, a girl of fourteen, had just died of cancer. We needed something to do to remember her, and console ourselves, and she had helped us plant bulbs there in the fall, when she was still coming to school. With the warm weather the tulips were already almost done. So we planted pansies.
And then the weather got even warmer — downright hot, and dry, and to top off our grief it looked like the pansies might die. So I started bringing my watering cans to school, and sending pairs of students out during the last class of the day to water. .
One day in May the two boys I sent out to water took a very long time to return. When they finally got back I started to scold them. But they were apologetic — they admitted that they had been jumping on the rocks near the driveway, and one of the watering cans had dropped and cracked. “But look!” they said triumphantly, and held up the red watering can. “We went to the tech room and borrowed mod podge; we fixed it!” The repair job was not pretty, but it held. It has held now for almost five years.
Sometime later when a Jewish friend of mine tried to explain to me what “tikkun olam” means — the need to repair the broken world — I thought of my watering can. It has done a lot of good over the years, but for me its best moment was when some kids who had been fooling around took the time to patch up their mistake. They wanted to honor the memory of their lost classmate, show their maturity, and hopefully avoid getting into trouble. They managed to do all of that with a bit of adhesive.
The boys who fixed the watering can probably don’t even remember this — it’s just one of many things they broke as young boys who liked to jump off rocks. But it reminds me of how we all need to try to do some good in this world — water the dry soil, remember those we have lost, and fix what gets broken along the way. If we don’t even try to take action, we will risk nothing, and there will be no breaks. But there will also be no repairs, and a lot of dull, green plastic watering cans. I’ll take my patched-up red one any day.
Creator God, help me find the tools I need to do your work here on earth — whether watering cans, mod podge, or patience. May I use these tools to repair the world. Amen