My friends, remember this, there are no bad plants or bad men. There is only bad husbandry.
In this chapter we get more about the way Père Madeleine was living his life, and in so many ways what we have described mirrors the life of the bishop Myriel. Rather than focus on the details, I want to zoom in on this quote that Madeleine drops at the tail end of a discourse about the usefulness of nettles, a plant that would often be discarded or at the least disregarded.
Very clearly seeing in the nettle an image of who he was to the society that had discarded, abused and misused him, Père Madeleine reminds us that it is neither plants or men that are categorically “bad”. The thing to blame in either case when a plant or a man goes wrong is the “husbandry”. Taking the human side into perspective, it’s everything from the larger society and it’s systems and structures to the specific people entrusted with raising and guiding a young person that influence whether or not that person will “flourish”. I love that the metaphor reached for here is not one of factories and industrial production, but the same gardening that Myriel knew and loved. We don’t press humans (or plants) out of a mould. We plant seeds in the ground, and we treat the soil with things that will increase nutrients. We supply sunshine and water, we remove weeds and other blockages. We work on the conditions that surround and we trust the natural processes to result in fruitfulness.
This is a principle we would all do well to fully integrate into our lives and thinking. Rather than pointing a finger at those who are “bad” (though accountability for actions is still a necessity and reality) we should ask ourselves what conditions led to this kind of fruit? Was it a spoiled over watering that led to shallow roots? Was it a parching under the heat of inhospitable conditions? Was it deficient soil? Pushing through to the why from an empathetic posture makes us all better people.