Volunteer corn

When a friend returned from Iowa a few weeks ago, she talked corn. She learned that popcorn is actually a very special kind of corn. Your everyday kernel cannot a popcorn make. She also saw volunteer corn, she told us—random stalks of corn that grow where they’re not supposed to, say perhaps, amidst a field of soybeans. So, there they stand, lonely, high above everything else, as if to say, Here I am! Pick me! Try me! Aren’t I cool all by myself?

Well, this past weekend, driving through Southern Minnesota, I perked up when I looked out the side window and saw volunteer corn. Lots of volunteers, in fact. I felt a sense of pride for these volunteers. They’re the underdogs, so way to go you kernel you! For not following suit, for taking the road less traveled, for sprouting above the others! For being independent. And now I’m really glad I felt this way because when I Googled "volunteer corn" (I wanted to see if this was the actual term...it is), I discovered that everyone is out to get the volunteer. Words like "manage" and "control" and "oust" and "infestation" and "weed" are used right alongside volunteer corn. Farmers do not want any volunteer corn, so those green stalks can just go ahead and quit raising their hands (in fact, I’d advise wilting below the other crops so as not to be killed or maimed!).

It’s funny though, isn’t it, that if that particular volunteer corn stalk were in another field, or even in the same field at a different time, it would not be called volunteer corn? It’d be an important crop, something yielding money and worth. Farmers would want to harvest it, take care of it, water it, fertilize it. It would be a precious commodity.

I just finished the book Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore, a true (and unlikely) story of a wealthy, white, art dealer befriending a homeless black man. It revealed and challenged some of the mean, and even subconscious, judgments we make against those people not like us. The volunteer corns of our fields, if you will. Unfortunately, my pride for volunteer corn in agriculture doesn’t look like my pride for people in everyday life. I tend not to have time for people who are different or time to find out about their differences, and perhaps come to admire them. We’d rather "manage" or "control" them. Which reminds me of another book, Under the Overpass by Mike Yankoski, who I had the privilege of interviewing in person at my former job. He took time off from college and traveled the United States with a friend as homeless people. Literally. They had no money and lived on the streets. It was an experiment of sorts to see how others treated homeless people. What Mike and his friend discovered was sad and heartbreaking. I read the book three or four years ago, and I still vividly remember one short story. They were camped out on the steps of a church one night. A sign in the front yard of the church advertised a big pancake breakfast in the morning. Well, when the sun came up, one of the church leaders walked out the door and kicked Mike and his friend off the steps, shooing them away without so much as a drop of syrup. I’m guessing, however, they would have gotten as many pancakes as they wanted had the church known they were really college kids from a prominent, wealthy, evangelical school.

Anyways, people, like volunteer corn, are called different things in different places and different times. But they’re always the same to God, and they should be to us too. They should always be precious and worthy of care and compassion.