In the last ten years, the worlds of botany, engineering, nanotech, and fluid dynamics have converged around a central flower. Interested separated vortex rings? Or permeable parachutes? How about unpowered flight? At the cutting edge of modern bioengineering waves the flagship flower of the daisy family that holds the key to all of these things. This bright yellow shining star of the daisy clan is rarely associated with its more popular kin. No… this daisy is considered a weed. It’s technical name is Taraxacum, but the French dubbed it “the lion’s tooth because of it’s distinctly jagged shaped leaf pattern. You probably know it by it’s more common name - the dandelion.
I’m Scott Beyer and this is the Love Better podcast where we explore the truths and lies about love and more importantly how to turn love into a skill – something we can get better at and hone along the way… and today, things are going to be just dandy.
The dandelion doesn’t have a lot in common with the king of the jungle even if its name means lion’s tooth… but for the past few days it has absolutely captivated my attention. Youtube videos on dandelions? Watched them. Fascinating factoids about dandelions? Definitely – did you know every part of the dandelion is edible? The root, the leaves, the stem, the flower – all of it! The dandelion is so beloved by the equine community that farmers once referred to it has “horse lettuce”. Everything about the dandelion is useful. It has medicinal properties, it tastes good, it is a beautiful yellow color, and it is easy to grow in a multiplicity of varied climates. Oh, yes, there is much to love about the dandelion… but it’s greatest gift, it’s bioengineered, God-designed job-dropping superpower is the cause of its most shameful of labels. The dandelion for all its splendid traits bears the moniker of weed… and there is really only one reason for that – it scatters its seeds better than just about any other common plant.
Engineers and researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, the storied halls of the University of Edinburgh, Imperial, and even Oxford have studied the dandelion’s ability to sow its own seeds. You already know the basics, dandelions start out as a flower, eventually a seed develops underneath each floret until the entire flower is replacing with a puffy white seed head. Did you know that puffy white seed collection has a name? You do now! It’s called ‘the clock’. You’re welcome. And this is where the scattering comes in. When a child gathers a dandelion, gently blowing its seeds into the wind – that toddler is amused, but the engineers are speechless.
Dandelions are prolific seed scatterers and that one dandelion head contains two to three hundred seeds… which means a single dandelion plant can contain as many as two thousand seeds and all of them are sown to the wind with their very own parachute. If you look closely at each dandelion seed, the seed is at the end, there is a stalk (called a beak) and at the top is a tiny parachute called a pappus made out of about 100 filaments. That parachute is an design dynamo. With zero propulsion and its ability to fly completely dependent upon the winds of change – a dandelion seed can fly as far as 60 miles under wind-generated propulsion which is pretty amazing because that pappus parachute is 90% air. Imagine having to parachuting out of plane, but before jumping you had to remove 90% of the fabric from your parachute. I wouldn’t recommend it. Yet, it works for the dandelion. It does an awful lot without much support.
Which brings us back to the real subject – how can we love better? Dandelions are exceptionally effective at duplicating themselves because they use a passive system of seed spreading that relies on quantity and opportunity for success. Dandelions produce a LOT of seeds and then they use the natural opportunities of wind to spread far and wide. And the more I learned about dandelions, the more I realized they follow the Ecclesiastes model of distribution and production.
Let me explain. In Solomon’s book of wisdom called Ecclesiastes, Solomon discusses the reality of life’s inconsistency. Life is full of randomness – both good and bad randomness… and in chapter 11 verses one and two, Solomon says,
“Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days. Give a portion to seven, or even to eight, for you know not what disaster may happen on earth.”
Planning is good, but in every planning process there should be consideration for the plans breaking down. Life doesn’t work out the way we want. There are disasters, emergencies, losses, and hiccups – so what do you do? You do what the dandelion does – you distribute and scatter. Cast your bread on many waters – give portions to seven or eight. And when it comes to love, that’s a good idea. Love is best if distributed evenly and not focused upon only a few sources. When we love specifically, but not generally – we aren’t scattering our love, we are localizing it and there is a word for that – it’s called ‘favoritism’.
In the Old Testament, there was a man named ‘Israel’ (also known as ‘Jacob’) who had many children, but, and I quote:
“Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons, because he was the son of his old age. And he made him a robe of many colors. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him.” (Gen 37:3-4)
Love given to the few instead of scattered to all isn’t healthy – it is divisive and dangerous. Compare Israel’s favoritism to what Jesus says about God’s love in Matthew 5:
"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Mat 5:43-48)
Perfect love doesn’t play favorites. Just like a dandelion doesn’t plant the seed anywhere specific – it just scatters wherever the wind goes. If our thought is that we will only show love toward people we feel deserve that love – we aren’t showing love, we are looking for a transaction. And that’s the opposite of love, love isn’t meant to be a situational transaction – it is meant to be an abiding character trait that transcends all relationships. That is why the Bible says, “God is love” because it isn’t something God just does from time to time – it is who He is.
Scattering seeds is what dandelions do – and they don’t just do it when the soil is good or the wind is favoring – they scatter seed everywhere. In fact, that’s another detail about dandelions that the scientists discovered.
Dandelion seeds are engineered by God to respond to different types of winds. Dandelion seeds are susceptible to different wind directions depending on where they are on the seed head. The feathery seeds on the side facing a breeze will let go most easily; the others hold on tens to hundreds of times tighter — until the wind shifts. In other words, the whole clock gets used. North wind, south wind, east wind, west wind – every gust gets a seed.
Dandelion love recognizes that the winds are always changing. Good days and bad days. Good relationships and bad relationships. We scatter seeds in all those situations. When your marriage is doing well – how can you show love instead of just coasting along? When your marriage is in more turbulent winds? How can you show you love in the midst of adversity and miscommunication. Different circumstances provide different opportunities to scatter love, but different relationships do to. Can you find ways to show love toward your neighbor, the trash collector, your coworker, or the store employee? Can you be a scatterer of love throughout all those relationships, not just the ones that strike close to home like your family and friends. After all, dandelions can scatter seeds pretty far – believe me, every year my lawn picks up dandelions whether I like it or not!
Which brings us to another aspect of dandelion love. Dandelions are prolific. One dandelion can populate over two and a half acres in a year… and that two and a half acres can produce over 100 million seeds the next year. Dandelions know how to make the numbers work for them. Little seeds of goodness planted every direction have a way of taking over. This is what Paul is talking about when he talks about love as a weapon of warfare – love is more powerful than vengeance. Consider Romans 12:19-21:
“Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." To the contrary, "if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
Vengeance is transactional – we attempt to target those who have done us harm and repay their harm back to them… but love is the opposite – it is indiscriminate – if anything, the harder the wind blows, the further the seed flies. And love that doesn’t stop when things get hard or people get messy – that type of love can overcome evil.
One way to think of it is that the world we wish we lived in isn’t too hard to imagine. Imagine a world that was full of kindness, selflessness, and general good will toward men. Folks say please and thank you to each other, smile, help each other, rally around those who are distressed, and find ways to meet one another’s needs by showing preference to one another in love – that world is a beautiful world… and dandelion love says I will try and make that happen. Even if everyone else keeps pulling us up like weeds – we will overcome. Love is more powerful than evil because love spreads the more you try and disperse it.
Dandelion love overcomes.
Which leads me to another aspect of dandelions – those little filaments that make up the pappus? Dandelions have about 100 filaments for each little seed parachute and the way that they move through the air is an engineering marvel. It is an entirely different type of flight than anything else we’ve ever seen before. Engineers at Edinburgh made a itty bitty wind tunnel just to test it. Dandelion seeds fly by changing the flow of air around them, they create what is called a separated vortex ring that changes the dynamics of the air flow and increases the drag coefficient of the seed. In layman’s terms, the seed changes the air around it as it travels so that the seed is always oriented properly.
The winds may twist and tumble, but the seed stays upright. Love has the same effect. When we learn to love indiscriminately, we also allow love to orient us not the environment. Who I am isn’t dependent on others anymore. Who I am is a choice, not a response. Let life happen – dandelions gonna be dandelions.
So, here are the lessons up to this point – if we are going to love like the mighty lion’s tooth Taraxacum – we need to plan for opportunities to be generous and kind. Plan for random acts of kindness. It may sound paradoxical, but it works.
We also need to consider all circumstances good ones for love. Good day? Love better! Bad day? How can I love better? And on top of that, we should be prepared to show love in all relationships – not just the close ones, but the distant ones, too. Who knows? That seed that scattered 50 miles away might turn into a mighty field to the glory of God who is love. Showing love to a stranger may not allow you to see the impact of the love as much as you can see it when you love those you are close to, but that isn’t something we are worried about… because that’s another aspect of dandelion love – it isn’t transactional – it’s an abiding character trait. God IS love, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could be more than what, too?
And when you do that, in true dandelion fashion love overcomes because here is the truth – the weed always wins. Gardeners come and go, but dandelions are forever.
Learn to love better – learn to scatter love like a dandelion.
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And until next time, “Remember, you are loved, so go… love better.”
