Category Archives: Rector’s Ramblings

In the Beginning and forever, let us till it and keep it

After a most tiresome winter (and I hear we may have yet more ice and/or snow even as I am writing this) the sight of the blooming crocus, or daffodil, or magnolia, is a feast for the eyes and a tonic for the spirit. Some of you are eagerly planning your gardens. One of my acquaintances recently made the transition from a house with a yard where there is “earth to garden,” to an urban high-rise where the “large boxes on the balcony offer only modest compensation.” Food for thought.
Genesis tells us that we are formed from the dust of the ground. “Adam,” loosely translated, means “earth creature.” Right after creating Adam, God “took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it” (see Genesis 2). Still today, many appreciate the blessings of tilling and keeping a garden: sometimes you even forget you are “working.” Before you know it, you have been outside for hours; you’re covered with dirt, smelly, sweaty and tired. Yet, you feel good, even in a spiritual way.
Obviously gardening is organic. It can also be meditative. Gardening teaches us patience as we learn, sometimes after years, that one plant does better on this side of our yard or in that corner of our balcony, while another plant totally fails in the same spot. If only we could cope with other kinds of failure as well as we do with plants that don’t thrive. Why is that, I wonder. Could it be related to the time pressures we impose upon ourselves and others, when in gardening, we know we have to wait for each season to unfold in God’s time?
In every season we can tend to our garden. From browsing through seed catalogues in winter, caring for plants we’ve “wintered in,” to pruning, rooting, preparing soil, planting bulbs, seeds, annuals … yes, gardening is a spiritual practice. It encompasses some of the perennial themes of theology and nature: the life-death-life cycle, gratitude, caring, movement of the body and soul as we till it and keep it and receive nourishment from it in return (gardener and garden serving each other in a symbiotic relationship).
So this May, as we remember our graduates, our mothers, and our fallen soldiers, let us stop and smell the flowers, sharing them, and if not already, consider growing some, too. And even if our spaces will not allow, or if we “till and keep the soil” in some way other than gardening, let us remember our Farmers’ Markets by supporting those who till and keep the soil so wonderfully for all. Thanks be to God.
Karen+