John Leax, American poet, essayist and fiction writer, lived on a small farm in New York State and taught writing at Houghton College. There was never enough time to do all the work on the farm, and the old orchard, planted higgledy-piggledy long ago by someone on a hillside, was neglected and overgrown. One day John was driving through the large, carefully groomed orchards of central Ontario, and found himself vaguely depressed by the endless rows of well-ordered trees. He reflected on his feeling, and on the sense of being at home in his own little, poorly tended orchard. Why was that, he wondered. It had to do, he finally concluded, with the way a small orchard fits into the scheme of creation, with many people caring for their tiny plots of ground. The huge orchards of the conglomerates, on the other hand, were sad reminders of the commercialization of the land.

"Perhaps this is why," he said, "though I feel my failure to bring the old orchard to fruitfulness, I feel no real guilt, why in fact I feel a sort of pleasure in watching it turn wild and useless. When I walk in it, it tells me that a man's caring comes to an end. It tells me that life is lived within the boundaries of extremes, of wildness and domestication. It tells me that my order is not the only order. And in its message I feel comfort."

His order is not the only order. And that is what he finds comforting. That is what we would all find comforting, I suspect, if we spent more time studying the lilies -- the rainbows, the geese, and the wildflowers.