The Beginning of A Memeory

I can’t say, I took up gardening five years ago, because, actually gardening seemed to have taken me up.  It all started very innocently when looking at a small area of ground and thinking of “what a garden my dad could have raised there.”  My mind flew back to Saratoga and dad standing in the middle of his garden, broad smile, sweat soaked shirt, hands crusted with moist dirt holding a bunch of carrots, beets, or array of other vegetables.  I think he knew everything about plants.  Standing there I confessed to myself I knew nothing about plants.  I had watched for years as my dad and grandmother working their gardens and flower beds, always appreciating the interplay of planting, nurturing, harvesting, along with the color and texture created by the various flowers, trees, and shrubs. But I didn't know the first thing about the process of cultivating or caring for a vegetable or flower garden, and as far as I was concerned, the details involved in that process were best left up to dad and grandmother.

But all of that changed when standing there I found unintentional tears running down my cheeks.  It was those thoughts that initiated me into the wonders of gardening, without overwhelming me with the details. Memories are fascinating starters.  I “built up” the beds by bringing in “sandy, looming soil,” as dad called it, fertilized the “dickens out of it,” as gradma added her sweet, soft, instructive voice.  Then I sat in tilling, removing rocks, and leveling to perfection, just like dad would do. It was a couple of nights, sleeping on it, and the decision of what sort of seeds were to be used.  Burpee, I thought.  The only kind dad would use other than the one’s grandmother had saved from her harvest the previous year. It's the perfect kind of seed, I thought, for a novice gardener! I planted and began looking immediately, after watering, to see if anything had sprouted.  Then, in just a few days, I was amazed by how quickly each row began to appear and the plants seemed to  put down roots in my heart. My first ever endeavor of the planting, tending and harvesting those plants was the cause of experiencing my amazing wonder at how something so small (like a memory or seed) can become extraordinary after 66 years of life.

Well, it didn’t take long after the first harvest before I began thinking and dreaming, exploring seed catalogs and nurseries, trying my hand at plants that required more attention and care: broccoli, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, pole beans, raspberries, black berries, cyclamen, iris, lilies, tulips, and a whole assortment of garden flora and fauna. I grew enchanted by the variety of tastes, color, texture, and arrangement each new species added to my gardens. I learned about specific care regimens, their particular pests, the difference between a partial-sun and partial-shade plant, and how soil acidity impacts the taste, and color of certain types of plants.

More than all of this, gardening took me up because gardening quickly grew in me a sense of wonder. I suspect God had a plan when the memory introduced me to my first garden. He knew that gardening would introduce me to the extraordinary in the ordinary. I’ve learned that I cannot help but begin to pay attention to the tiniest details as I garden, and in turn, begin to notice all kinds of other awe-producing details all around me. The varieties of the color green in the trees, grasses, plants and shrubs, the nuances of blue and aqua hues that shimmer on lakes and oceans, and the little creatures that share the world with me—birds, rabbits, coyotes, squirrels, deer, and dogs.  Living now, during the summer,  in North Carolina, where gardening is beloved and beauty envelopes me, this is all the more true for me.  

The Christian Scriptures indicate that the natural response to wonder is worship. Indeed, the psalmist suggests that the very detailed elements of creation proclaim the glory and worship of God: The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of his hands!  I’m beginning to realize more than ever; I am drawn into the very presence of God when I wonder in God's creation. I affirm the beauty and the goodness of God as I wonder at and with and for creation. And as I wonder, I agree with God that all God made "was very good" Genesis 1:31.

I confess, Heavenly Father, there are more times than I would like that I loose my sense of wonder. My life, at times gets too busy, too laden with care or comfort or grief that I cannot see Your extraordinary presence in the ordinary details of life. And sometimes You seem far off and unreachable, and I long for the tending and nurturing of a gardener for myself.  I cannot explain away that longing any more than the psalmist, who expressed a similar lament when You felt far off to him. But I do know that nurturing my own garden and wondering aloud at the beauty of color and intricacy, I am comforted by the declarations of creation—of gardens and waters and heavens who seem confident, not only that there is a Gardener ,but One who is very good.

Thoughts of Darkness and Veggies

I've been considering for a couple of years building a cellar at Quiet Rest.  It would be similar in structure to the one my grandfather had built for grandmother in which she winter stored the bounty of fresh and canned garden from the previous summer, sixty years ago.  A kind of cave, have you. Providing a constant temperature, yet dark and earthy odor.  When describing the features to a neighbor friend and his grandson; the six year old fella asked, “Will it be scary?” 

Surely he hadn't been exposed to Greek literature!  Of course, I’m supposing Plato to be credited for any negative views of dark caves. I remember his was a vision of darkness and imprisonment, that place where we remain unable to grasp anything more than shadows, ensnared, yet unable to step out of the night that holds us. As I remember, I had a similar view of any deep darkness, long before I had read Plato’s works.  Dark places became metaphors I would avoid until I was about thirty five. The darkness of caves or other environments was a curse that confined.

Thankfully, for the Celtic Christian, and I suspect somewhat for myself, having seen and tasted the hidden fruits of grandmother’s garden emerge from the dark cellar, along with viewing the wondrous calcite crystals when the light is turned on at Jewel Cave, have become, in fact, the opposite of a “scary,” confining curse.  I went on to tell the neighbor and his grandson my story.  From their beginnings in the fifth century, Celtic believers held a strong sense of what they called Sacred Space, referring to certain places—caves, wells, even friendships—as Thin Places. Which is to say: places where the veil between this world and the divine world seems somehow sheer. In these places the glory of God seems better able to seep through to human awareness.  This has, for me, only happened through much intentional practice.   

Perhaps it is in this tradition that many of the Irish poets have offered a different take on darkness, and conversely, the surprise of blessing, not curse, in the midst of it. As John O'Donohue writes, "The core of the human is not some psychological cellar that holds us captive in the crippled shapes of our woundedness and destructive choices." Rather, the core of the human is, "the soul, the core of self...that continues to dream of a state of wholeness, that place" he writes, "where everything comes together, where loss will be made good, where blindness will transform into vision, where damage will be made whole, and where the clenched question will open in the house of surprise."

Therefore I have come to the place of desiring whether the cave is dark with difficulty or crowded with a sense of the sacred, I will witness that the mark of The Infinite Maker upon my soul as always legible. And it is this quality that hopefully will kindle my ethics, justice, and imaginations to love God and neighbor and to bless another, wherever it is I find myself. Not being naïve enough to think while this posture of blessing will not erase difficulty of darkness nor abolish it, I commit to reaching deeper to draw out the hidden fruit of the dark.

In the gospel story of Jesus at the wedding in Cana, Jesus hints at both sorts of caves, and the one who is able to draw fruit from both. He is among friends and family at a wedding, when the wine runs out. His first reaction to his mother's plea to fix the situation hints at the darker time he knew was on its way. And yet, in full view of that dark cave, he looks around him at a wedding feast, filled with guests of the hopeful bride and groom. And seeing another sacred space, he surprises the crowd with wine. Vineyard owner Amelia Ceja says that "Anyone can make wine. But not everyone can make wine that tells a story." I’m not a wine kind of guy but what little I have consumed I can't think of any wine that embodies this idea more than the wine Jesus made in Cana that day.

For in this wine, Jesus blends the cry of the human heart for wholeness with the delight of the human heart for blessing and communion. He uses the symbols and waters of purification, knowing full well what the purification of humanity would ultimately cost him, and he creates enough wine to bless the bride and groom and all their guests long after the wedding is finished—a sign of both his coming hour and the coming abundant feast. 

Today, I believe that the promise of communion with Christ is something that I can discover in caves again and again, whether dark with difficulty or light with mystery and hope. Fruit can indeed be found in both. And to invoke blessing on another  in the midst of these sacred spaces is to call some of that wholeness Jesus hinted at in Cana upon my heart even now. It is to make a feast, whether in Cana of Galilee, here at the edge of the Smoky Mountains or New York city that is itself a sign of the Great Wedding Feast to come. The Master of that scared space, found in places that may ever surprise me, is the God who thankfully continues to bring hidden fruit out of the dark.