A Homeless Man, An Ocotillo, and a Spring Miracle

A Homeless Man, An Ocotillo, and a Spring Miracle

Ocotillo with orange blooms

ocotillo closup

Monochromatic would be the best color-word to describe the Pyramid Trail in the early morning light. Forget kaleidoscopes. Or rainbows. Or watercolor palettes. Only one color remains on the trail that zigzags up this portion of South Mountain.

Brown.

Sigh.

I get so tired of brown.

The few wildflowers that braved the above-average temps in February have come and gone. Even the ditsy blonde blooms of the brittlebush that arrive early to the spring party each year and stay late, are shriveled and dry.

In the best circumstances South Mountain struggles to compete with the extra vegetation found in the Superstitions. With only five days of moisture so far in 2016, totaling 0.57 inches of rain, it has not been the best of years. Many wildflowers need summer and winter rains to risk desert blooming.

I resign myself to beige reality.

Imagine my surprise when I come around a tight corner on the twelfth switchback to encounter the brilliant orange flames of an ocotillo in full bloom.

Much of the year the plant appears as a gathering of gray, thorny sticks, each about fifteen feet in length and radiating from a central clump in the ground. Soon after a rain, the ocotillo responds to the slightest moisture, sprouting small green leaves among its one-inch thorns. But once the ground dries, the plant discards all foliage to conserve moisture, looking like a standing collection of dead branches.

But then comes spring. According to Susan J Tweit in Seasons in the Desert, spring brings a miracle. A miracle that doesn't require rain.

"In the hottest, driest weeks of spring and early summer when other desert plants turn brown, ocotillo draws on its stored food and water and bursts into bloom."

I position my camera to record the fiery red flowers.  I capture the tubular flames against the blue sky, one rocketing bloom ready to blast off to the moon caught in the background.

Sometimes in the everlasting brown, it is easy to forget.

It is easy to forget when all appears dried up and dead, that life is still happening.

Below the surface life.

Life now bursting forth with food for hummingbirds, bees, wasps, and other pollinators.

Orange flaming life, ready to blast off to the moon.

On Good Friday my husband and I got a call to go see a former homeless man at the hospital. Kevin first met Will six years ago as part of Homeless Connect, a program partnering homeless men and women with a guide who could help them find the services they needed in the community, anything from obtaining birth certificates to receiving a free haircut.

Will and Kevin became friends. After the establishment of I Help (Interfaith Homeless Emergency Lodging Program) in Chandler, Will often stayed with other homeless guests at our church as part of a weekly rotation of nightly lodging. In December Kevin and others dropped off furniture for Will at his new apartment, as he had transitioned out of homelessness.

Here the story gets a bit muddled. Some say Will had a tough case of the flu. Others say a stroke. Others point to a compromised immune system from years of addiction and life on the streets. Whatever the reason, Will landed in the hospital and eventually on life support. The family called Kevin.

The hospital room was filled with machines sustaining a man's life. A friend's life.

Beeps. Pulses. Manufactured breath.

We held Will's hand and prayed, releasing him to Jesus and to a faith he believed, in spite of his difficult past. We lingered where no evidence, beyond the machines, remained of Will's life.

A desert room.

Yet sometimes under the weathered skin, when all is stripped bare and there is no sign of anything green, the work of life is happening.

Even when there is no rain, a miracle is coming.

Drawing from stored faith and a grace not based on works, is the soon-coming day when more than orange flames will appear and more than fiery flowers will burst out in life.

A message God left in the ocotillo.

A message Christ bore as a living witness. A promise Will believed:Truly, I tell all of you emphatically, whoever hears what I say and believes in the one who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged, but has passed from death to life.   John 5:24 NIV

Eternal life.

Will is preparing to bloom.

*Note: Will died on Monday, March 28, 2016, the day after Easter.  Kevin went back to see him again, only hours before Will's blooming.