Bloom Where You Are Planted

Marilyn Smith was a little intimidating to me, but was a friend, nevertheless. She was intimidating because she was a professional in charge of a rather large operation in Miami. And Miami was enough bigger than any of the other jurisdictions in the State of Florida, that it might as well have been its own state. In fact, we Tallahassee bureaucrats sometimes referred to it as the State of Miami.

Marilyn had come to the state when Florida took over what had been the county operation of services to “juvenile delinquents” – a term that was still in vogue at the time. So, Marilyn’s familiarity with the Miami courts and the nature of Miami’s “delinquency problem” preceded and was far superior to anything the state capitol, 483 miles north in Tallahassee, had to offer them.

Marilyn’s office was in a converted juvenile detention center – a “lock-up.” And her office itself had previously been a cell. Against the wall at one end of the room was a combination toilet and washbasin – long since deprived of the water required to operate it. Always looking for ways to brighten the day, Marilyn had placed in the basin a small artificial, flowering plant. Above the plant on the wall she had a poster of another such plant with the words “Bloom where you are planted.” And that was what she had done. From that small detention cell, she was running an efficient intake operation for the Miami Juvenile Courts.

That was in the early 70’s. I have thought of that sign often since then, trying to remember to do just that: “Bloom where I am planted.” Too often my mind goes to the bigger picture. When we lived in Haiti, I wanted to fix Haiti. I want to fix the Black/White problem in the states. I want to fix the church and four of my books have been aimed at doing just that. I want to fix the mistreatment of refugees, and especially of refugee children in this country. But to paraphrase my brother, Cecil, God doesn’t call on us to change the world. That’s his job. He calls on us to help whoever he places in out path today and to hold up a light in the darkness. Our friend Bob Duvall used to pray every night that the next day God would lead him to someone he could help and teach him how to help them. Bloom where you are planted.

[Though, if an opportunity comes along to change the world, I wouldn’t pass that up either.]