Blackberries

I have been reading the absolutely zany 1980 novel by Tom Robbins called "Still Life With Woodpecker." It was a New York Times best seller -- about the difference between criminals and outlaws, the conflict between social activism and romantic individualism, powerful Arabs, exiled royalty, and pregnant cheerleaders. Mostly, however, it is about the mystery of love.

How did I miss this book in the early 80's? I must have been too busy reading serious stuff like theology. Oh well, I wouldn't have appreciated it nearly as much in those days. This morning I read this passage from the book:

Blackberries.
  Nothing, not mushrooms, not ferns, not moss, not melancholy, nothing grew more vigorously, more intractably in the Puget Sound rains than blackberries. Farmers had to bulldoze them out of their fields. Homeowners dug and chopped, and still they came. Park attendants with flame throwers held them off at the gates. Even downtown, a lot left untended for a season would be overgrown. In the wet moths, blackberries spread so wildly, so rapidly that dogs and small children were sometimes engulfed and never heard from again. In the peak of the season, even adults dared not go berry picking without a military escort. Blackberry vines pushed up through solid concrete, forced their way into polite society, entwined the legs of virgins, and tried to loop themselves over passing clouds.

To what shall we compare the Kingdom of God? Perhaps it is like blackberries -- obnoxious and invasive and unstoppable.