“Grace finds us in the most unlikely of places.”
—Frederick Buechner (1926–2022). American novelist, essayist, and theologian celebrated for finding the sacred in ordinary life and revealing grace in the everyday.
The weedwhacker seemed to swerve to the right automatically, all on its own, drawing my attention to the seedling it had spared.
It was no taller than a thumb sticking out from the ground, standing amidst weeds with shy determination. Its two bright green leaves caught the light like miniature solar panels of hope. Its stem, soft and pale and furry, leaned slightly as if listening for encouragement. Even then, that little plant held a quiet confidence—as if it kmew. It had been planted by chance but saved by grace.
I recognized at once what it was. A cherry tomato plant. What I didn’t know at the start was how it ended up on the ravine side of the house. But looking up, I saw the deck and remembered that I had a pot of cherry tomatoes immediately overhead the summer before. No doubt one had fallen, survived winter’s biting cold and deep snows, and decided to spring up anew.
And there I stood, weedwhacker in hand, faced with a near-end-of-summer decision. I turned off the engine, knelt down, and started clearing out a circle around this bold and unexpected “volunteer”—the name given to plants that come up on their own against all odds.
“Why not,” I thought. “With a little care, it might yield a few homegrown cherry tomatoes I never expected to enjoy this summer.”
And sure enough. I kept its care. It kept its harvest.
Now–just a few nights before an early October freeze–it stands there, as triumphant as any tomato ever stood that weathered an entire growing season.
Now, it rises shoulder-high, a tower of green threaded with promise. Its vines twist around the dark metal frame like gratitude made visible. Tiny green globes cluster along the stems, and lower down, a few ripe ones gleam in red defiance, as if to say, “I told you so.” The leaves still shimmer with a stubborn kind of life, even as the maples beyond it begin to blush.
There’s nothing cultivated about it—no pruning, no fertilizer, no plan. Just persistence and grace, sunlight and chance. And yet here it stands, holding its own in the cooling air, reminding me that survival itself can be a form of beauty.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my “volunteer.” It’s bringing me far more than a modest crop of unexpected cherry tomatoes.
It’s made me realize that volunteers don’t wait for ideal conditions—they take root where chance (or a passing bird) drops them. They don’t ask for permission or perfect soil. They just begin.
It’s the same old truth we’ve all heard before: Bloom where you’re planted. But maybe it’s deeper than that. Maybe it’s: Grow where you’re dropped—in the shadow of a deck, on the far side of life, wherever circumstance has flung you.
I’ve seen it in my own life. Years ago, I applied for one of the most prestigious internship programs in the world—only twelve applicants accepted each year at the Library of Congress. I wasn’t one of them. I remember feeling the sting of that closed door, certain the opportunity had passed me by.
But life has a way of circling back with a wink. A few years later, I found myself not as an applicant, but as the Director of that very program.
Turns out, I didn’t need to be planted there. I just had to be dropped nearby—and let grace do the rest.
My uninvited tomato plant taught me something else as well. Trust the hidden season. Volunteer seeds sleep all winter, cradled in darkness, before quietly awakening at the right time. Growth doesn’t happen on command. It happens in its own good time.
I’m acquainted with that hidden season, too. When I stepped away from teaching a few years ago, I knew that my growing wasn’t over, but I didn’t know what would grow next. I told everyone that I was reinventing myself. Beneath the quiet, growth was germinating—new books, new research, and even new love. What looked like waiting turned out to be preparation. What seemed still was simply the ground beneath me and the spirit within me doing unseen work.
And when the time was right, I did what the volunteer does—I showed up. No fanfare, no grand design, just the simple decision to do it. For me, that meant saying yes to each of those beneath-the-soil quiet callings—to write the books that had been whispering for years, to follow the research wherever it led, and to open my heart to the unexpected tenderness of late love.
That’s the thing about volunteers—they don’t wait for invitation or applause. No one planted them, but they bloom anyway. They don’t ask whether the garden has room or whether their color belongs—they just begin.
And maybe that’s the lesson I needed most. I didn’t have to worry about where my voice fit, or whether the world needed another essay, another story, or even another reiteration of me. I didn’t ask for permission to grow again. I realized it was enough to rise simply because it was my season to do so, trusting there’s sunlight enough for us all.
And here’s another thing about volunteers. They don’t replicate the parent plant exactly. They grow into something recognizably related but distinctly their own.
I’ve come to see that being true to myself doesn’t always mean staying the same. I’m not who I was as the classroom professor, but my impulse to share and to spark curiosity still grows from the same root. The fruit’s changed, that’s all. The lessons I once delivered from a lectern now bloom in essays, in talks, and in conversations that reach farther than any classroom wall. What I’ve learned is that my reinvention isn’t a transplant. It’s a graft. We keep growing from the old stock, but the new branch has its own flavor and its own light.
And, finally, my volunteer has reminded me to continue giving back what I’ve been given. Each seed that grows here will fall and feed the soil for something new. Maybe that’s the best any of us can hope for—to leave behind the nourishment we once received.
In my own small way, that’s what I’m trying to do. The knowledge, encouragement, and faith that once took root in me now find new life in the books I write, the talks I give, and the scholarships I’ve planted for students I may never meet. It’s a kind of composting of the spirit—the slow transformation of gratitude into something that can feed others.
I don’t expect to see everything that grows from it. Few gardeners do. But the joy is in knowing that something will. The volunteer’s real legacy isn’t its own fruit—it’s the next generation of seeds that quietly scatter, waiting for their moment to rise.
Looking back, it still amazes me that it all began with a weedwhacker that swerved on its own. A fraction of an inch the other way, and none of this would have happened—no green tower, no handfuls of sweet tomatoes, no lessons rooted deep enough to feed a soul.
I used to think grace arrived like a grand gesture, something shining and unmistakable. Now I know better. Sometimes grace hums in the hands of someone trimming weeds, sparing one small life without even knowing it.
And so I celebrate them all—the unplanned blessings, the second chances, the overlooked beauties that spring up where no one thought they could. The friendships. The ideas. The late loves. The little resurrections that ask nothing but a bit of light and a chance to grow.
Because in the end, life itself may be one long volunteer—unplanted, unscripted, but somehow still determined to bear fruit.
The Wired Researcher 