One Million Orchids And Tikkun Olam “To Repair The World”
As the lilies of Easter lose their fragrance,
it is time for Christians of all denominations
to consider Tikkun Olam as a living expression
of “Resurrectional Faith.”
Despite all its zoning restrictions – the colors you can paint your house, how and whether or not you could (you couldn’t until a few years ago) park your truck in the driveway, restrictions on home remodeling, Coral Gables is a “City Beautiful.”
More so in recent years.
According to scientists at Britian’s famed Kew Royal Botanical Gardens, orchids are one of our planet’s most incredible evolutionary success stories. Found on every continent of the Earth, even north of the Artic Circle, there are nearly three times as many orchid species as there are species of birds alive in the world today.
With more than 25,000 documented species worldwide – making them the largest of all flowering plant families - and more being discovered each year, orchids probably originated in the northern hemisphere during the time of the dinosaurs – around 83 million years ago. And, amazingly, they hold the record for having the smallest seeds of all flowering plants; a typical orchid seed is the size of a speck of dust and only visible under a microscope. One tropical American orchid can produce almost four million – 4,000,000 - seeds, while one gram of seeds of a southeast Asian species can contain 3.4 million – 3,400,000 - seeds.
As co-founder of Standard Oil Henry Flagler began expanding his Florida East Coast Railroad south from Jacksonville to modern day Miami (1889-1896) and eventually Key West (1912), Florida’s panoply of orchids was devastated. Orchids were literally ripped from trees and their native habitats, packed into railroad cars and shipped north to be sold to decorators and collectors as disposable potted plants.
Located on the southern fringes of Miami and Coral Gables and opened in 1938, the 83-acre Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden houses one of the world’s most extensive collections of palms and rare species from around the world and spectacular year-round displays of orchids.
[A quick science lesson: Epiphytic orchids, once almost omni-present in pre-Flagler Railroad Florida, grow without soil or potting media, often attaching themselves to trees, thriving in warm and humid environments where they can obtain water and nutrients from the air around them.]
In early 2013, FTBG researchers and scientists teamed-up with the City of Coral Gables and the Miami-Dade TERRA Environmental Research Institute, a magnet school, to establish the Million Orchid Project with the goal of installing 250,000 orchid plans throughout the city.
Using seed pods that can contain up to 12,000 seeds each, Fairchild scientists and volunteers go through a painstaking and months-long process of sprouting seeds in specially formulated, contamination free environments until they are ready to be attached to host trees in parks, along roadsides and in traffic roundabouts throughout the city.
As the project has grown, FTBG has begun making “restoration kits” available to homeowners and institutions throughout South Florida. The kits of twelve “starter” plants contain both epiphytic and ground orchids - “Florida Butterfly,” “Night Fragrant,” “Mule Eared” and “Florida Oncidium.”
Pope John Paul II’s 23-hour visit to Miami in September 1987 is most frequently remembered for the thunder, lightning and torrential rain that brought his public Mass before 23,000 folks to a rain-soaked, mid-sermon halt.
[Lesson Learned: Don’t plan outdoor papal masses during hurricane season.]
Less well remembered – but more important – from the pope’s Miami stopover was his meeting with local and national Jewish leaders. Rabbi Mordecai Waxman, leader of the Jewish delegation and chairman of the International Jewish Committee on Interreligious Consultation, called John Paul to share a spirit of goodwill and reconciliation:
“A basic belief of our Jewish faith is the need ‘to mend the world under the sovereignty of God’—‘l’takken olam b’malkhut Shaddai.’ To mend the world means to do God’s work in the world…”
Without getting to far into the theological Everglades – a 1.5 million acres “River of Grass” 50 miles wide and about one-foot deep with “saw grass” that grows from four-to-ten feet tall, “‘l’’takken olam b’malkhut’” dates at least to the Mishnah – classic rabbinic teaching codified around 10 - 200 C.E. that prescribed social policies providing extra protection to those who might be disadvantaged. This included legislation governing just conditions in the writing of divorce decrees and for the freeing of slaves.
The origin of the Aleinu (“It is our duty to praise”) – the closing prayer of the morning, afternoon and evening service of Rosh Hashanah – is disputed. Some credit it to the prophet Joshua after the conquest of Jericho (c. 1,400 B.C.E); others attribute it to the Tannaim (“teaching rabbis”) of the period between 20 and 210 C.E. The Aleinu reminds the Jewish people of their struggles over the centuries, the importance of abolishing all forms of idolatry, and that responsibility comes with every trial and every victory. The prayer reflects their dedication to God and God’s eternal rule. In part, it reads:
“It is our duty to praise the Master of all,
to acclaim the greatness of the One who forms all creation…
We bend our knees and bow down
and give thanks before the Ruler,
the Ruler of Rulers, the Holy One.
Blessed is God,
the One who spread out the heavens and
made the foundations of the earth,
and whose precious dwelling is in the heavens above,
and whose powerful presence is in the highest heights.
Adonai is our God, there is none else.
Our God is truth, and nothing else compares…
Therefore, we put our hope in You, Adonai, our God,
to soon see the glory of your strength,
to remove all idols from the Earth,
and completely cut off all false gods;
to repair the world, your holy Empire….
(Over centuries, various expressions of Judaism - Reformed, Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and others - have dropped and/or altered verses and phrases)
In its ancient form, the phrase reflects Jewish mysticism and the struggle to reestablish a world before human sin. In the 16th Century, tikkun olam became a focal point of the mystical and esoteric Lurianic Kabbalism with its focus on the struggle between a divine and benevolent deity and destructive evil – a classic battle between good and evil.
After World War II and the Holocaust, tikkun olam lost much of its cosmological meaning or application and, beginning in the 1950s, was applied to social action. Organizations, authors, rabbis and others used the term to refer to social action programs: tzedakah (charitable giving) and gemilut hasadim (acts of kindness). Eventually, tikkun olam became more and more associated with progressive Jewish approaches to social issues. Today it remains connected with the shared human responsibility for fixing what is wrong with the world, a concern with public policy and societal change. Most frequently, today, tikkun olam refers to category of mitvot, involving work for the improvement of society.
On January 20, 1977, seconds after taking the Oath of Office, President Jimmy Carter began his inaugural address:
“In this outward and physical ceremony we attest once again to the inner and spiritual strength of our Nation. As my high school teacher, Miss Julia Coleman, used to say: "We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles."
“Here before me is the Bible used in the inauguration of our first President, in 1789, and I have just taken the oath of office on the Bible my mother gave me a few years ago, opened to a timeless admonition from the ancient prophet Micah:
“’He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.’” (Micah 6: 8)
President Carter reflected the essence of tikkun olam in our day: To act justly, to practice genuine charity and kindness toward all men and women, and to walk humbly in obedience the Divine Will and Love – to make today’s world better tomorrow. Simple: to make our world just the slightest bit better.
Although they would almost certainly never use the phrase, maxillofacial surgeon Dr. Gary Parker and his wife Susan know a great deal about tikkun olam. On December 6, 2018, the same day former President George H. W. Bush was buried in Texas, his Points of Light Foundation honored the Parkers and their children and celebrated “the power of the individual to spark change and improve the world.” With a ’77 B.S. from UC Davis and nine years at UCLA, where he earned a doctorate in dentistry with a specialization in oral and maxillofacial surgery, followed by training in hospital dentistry, Dr. Davis worked in the University’s medical dental clinic, providing critical care to farm workers in California’s San Joaquin Valley. “I saw firsthand that there are people who can’t access health care. Poverty took on names and faces. I began to think about working in remote places,” he told UCLA’s Newsroom last year.
Five years after graduation, Dr. Parker volunteered for what was supposed to be a three-month tour aboard a Mercy Ship, one of a fleet of humanitarian and nonprofit floating hospitals serving the neediest of the world. A few years later, he met and married Susan. Almost four decades later, with their children born and reared aboard Mercy ships - Carys is a hospital chaplain with a Master of Divinity degree and Wesley has completed his degrees in exercise physiology and nutrition, Gary and Susan are among the longest-serving members of the international Mercy Ships program.
Today, Dr. Parker is the chief medical officer of the Africa Mercy, the world’s largest charity hospital ship. In its 40-plus year history, Mercy Ships has provided more than $1.7 billion in services in over 55 of the world’s poorest countries. The third, newest and largest member of the fleet is scheduled to begin operations this year.
Operating to remove goiters that – unattended for years because of poverty – have grown to the size of footballs or correcting cleft palates and other facial disfigurements that leave children and adults isolated, abandoned, unmarriable and frequent objects of bullying – in forty years, Dr. Parker and his family have rebuilt small worlds one patient at a time.
While the Parkers and Mercy Ships founders Don and Deyon Stephens have become the public faces of the program, during any year more than 1,200 volunteers – physicians, nurses, medical specialists, folks running the coffee shop and preparing and serving meals in the dining rooms, keeping engines and other mechanicals running, doing laundry and swabbing decks and operating room floors, or entertaining and playing with child-patients in the pre- and post-operation wards – all combine to make Mercy Ships medical miracle realities.
Today, tikkun olam must be more than a phrase.
Perhaps, just perhaps, it’s time to be done with christian nationalism and, instead, act justly, love tenderly and walk humbly with the Creator of the Universe, and, as the rabbi said to the pope, “’to mend the world under the sovereignty of God ’— ‘l’takken olam b’malkhut Shaddai. To mend the world means to do God’s work in the world…”
Can we?
Today, everyday, the volunteers aboard Mercy Ships change and save lives.
In 1983, to plant orchids where, more than one-hundred years ago, they had been uprooted and vanished, and to watch them bloom to the glory of the Creator and for our simple enjoyment was but a dream.
Today, Coral Gables is the city where orchids bloom. Tens and hundreds of thousands of orchids….