Seeing Squashes

This morning, I harvested twenty-three winter squashes from my small garden. Satisfying work. Altogether these two plants, one delicata and one acorn, produced about thirty squashes, fifteen from each plant. That surprised me for some reason. Usually, I harvest without counting. But I was present to them on this day.

As I brushed the mud off their skins, I thought about the pies they would fill and the evenings when the aroma of their baking would warm the evening kitchen. I laid them on the outdoor table and admired them. Each shape was slightly different from the others of the same variety, each one individually beautiful yet matching the others. Gratitude filled my soul.

The Great Creator fashioned these fruits from the soil of the earth and here they were given to me. Gracious gifts worthy of inexpressible gratitude and admiration.

Day five of the Thirty Days of Seeing

Photo: Some of the harvested squash from my garden.

The Garden: Well-Watered

The past week has been sweltering. Temperatures have soared over the 100 mark. Those of us without the benefit of AC have been shedding clothes, standing in the sprinkler, or sitting immoveable in the shade. Not much gets done when it is this hot. The most I can do is get ice from the freezer, drop it into my water glass, and raise it to my lips. Oh, I do a fair job of saying, “Whew, it’s hot!” over and over. But that is about it.

Amazingly, my garden is flourishing. The tomatoes, beans, squashes, and cucumbers are reaching for more of that sun’s heat. All they need is water, water, water. Even the potted plants on the patio are doing well. What do they need? Water, sometimes twice in one day, and a bit of plant food. As long as these plants have water, they seem to thrive in the heat.

So what does this have to do with the spiritual life? Well, I started thinking about heat. You know . . . life heats up. Maybe we feel like we are in a pressure cooker or some other metaphor. We sweat drops of stress or tension. We get red in the face. Whatever. The question comes: “How can we thrive in the heat of life?” Hmmm . . . a fountain . . . of life. Living water. Streams of living water. How does one stay watered in the heat?

On one of the hot days, my daughter sat on the patio with her feet resting in a bucket of cool water. She claimed that as long as her feet were cool, she felt cooler. I like that. If my feet are grounded in the springs of living water, I will thrive in the heat of life. Where is this water? Jesus told the Samaritan woman that he was the source of that water. That’s the water I want.

This is the way of the garden life: well-watered from a living source.

Photo: Nasturtiums

The Garden: Attending

For two weeks my garden has been tended by others because I was away. Not good when it comes to gardening. One of the tend-ers watered, but I failed to tell her to not water the drying garlic. Ooops. The other tend-er stopped picking the harvest after the first week. Bad news. Neither tend-er was to weed or clear or tie up or pick off slugs. Just the basic tending. It is amazing what can happen with only two weeks of basic tending.

The zucchini plant produced a three-foot club-shaped fruit. The yellow squash wasn’t any better. Their yellow skins may as well have been gourds. The oversized cucumbers . . . mostly seeds. The spinach was tall and threatening to flower along with the lettuce. The snow peas were no longer flat. The winter squash was spreading into the pepper area and showing signs of powdery mildew. You get the picture.

This minimal tending of a garden is sufficient for short periods of time, but had I been gone longer. It would have been unmanageable. Some plants would have stopped producing altogether. Some would have prevented entry into other parts of the garden. And in some of the beds, I would have had to yank out everything and wait for the fall planting. As it is, two days of pulling, cutting, trimming, tying, and digging has just about got it under control. Another day or two and I will able to call it good.

As I tend to the needs of the garden, I am reminded that the untended spiritual life can become overgrown. Even minimal tending generates problems. I have to ask “How does my untending make me unproductive?” “How does my untending produce a useless product?” “How does my untending prevent the spirit’s access into other areas of my life?” “How much time does God have to spend pulling, cutting, trimming, and digging to rid my life of weeds, disease, and overgrown stuff?”

This is the way of the garden life: diligently attending to what is growing at the moment.

Photo: Squash plants

The Garden: Birthing

Right now in my garden, some of the leaf lettuce plants are stretching upward and showing the beginning of flowers. They are preparing themselves for the seed that will follow. There are a few things I notice about this process.

First, the new leaves are small, and they get smaller the closer they are to the flower head. It is as though they are saying, by virtue of their size, “Don’t eat me.” Honestly, they are not worth harvesting.

Another thing that seems to say don’t eat me is the bitterness. It begins slowly, but the plants get more bitter as the seed head grows. This bitterness can be tolerated to a point, but there comes a bitterness that is just uneatable.

The third thing that happens is that the leaves get tough. Their texture changes. They are no longer supple and moist. They even feel rough. Along with this texture change is a color change. This indicates to me that the leaves are now tough and if I tear them, a thick white sap drips from them. Not particularly appetizing for a fresh garden salad.

It is as though the entire plant is protecting the formation of its immature young. Everything about the plant says, “I am not edible anymore.” Its life cycle is now focused on forming what will bring life to new plants. It is in a stage of birthing.

The lettuce plants have done their part in the nourishing of those who would enjoy its bounty. They offered themselves fully, but now the time has come to nourish something else. The future. Life. Future life.

Reflecting on the birthing process of the lettuce plant has given me pause to think about those things in my own life that are in process of being birthed. Birthing new attitudes, new habits, new ways of thinking and feeling and sensing—all of these new ways of being require a change, a focused change. And this change seems to say, “I need to nourish something else right now.” Out of this, questions arise.

What is it that needs to be nourished? What needs to diminish so that the seed of it may grow? How might the nourishing of that seed become bitter? What will toughen and become rough? And how will all of this be nourishing to what is being birthed?

This is the way of the garden life: giving nourishment to the birthing process.

Photo: Red leaf lettuce

The Garden: Touching

The thing about gardening is that I get to touch food in the raw. There is something sacred about that. Not only do I trim and clip, stake and tie, water and feed, but I also harvest and handle. Touching the plants and ultimately the food is unavoidable.

Some plants like the squashes and cucumbers are prickly. If I want to avoid an itchy rash, I wear a long sleeve shirt and gloves in that part of the garden. Artichokes, too, are spiny, so I clip those with care. Tomato plants stain my hands green. The leaves of lettuce and spinach are fragile and tear easily. Carrots and beets bring soil with them and must be brushed with my fingers. Peas are smooth and green beans are snappy. And herbs vary in texture. Every part of the garden has a feel. The gardener must touch the food.

In some parts of the world, people eat food with their fingers. No utensils. I like this. This year, I decided to have a monthly tea with a couple of my good friends. Each of us prepares finger food. Utensil using is minimal. The food seems to taste better. We pick it up, admire it, and notice it. We are aware of what we are eating. We are present to it and it is present to us. Of course food is always present, but often we are not.

I think of times that I opened a can, dumped it in a pan, ladled it into a bowl, and spooned it into my mouth. Never once did I touch it with my hands. I tasted it, but was I really engaged with it? Probably not. Generally, I cook with whole foods. This feels right. I get the sense that God made food to be picked and sorted, basketed and carried, washed and scrubbed, sliced and mashed, steamed and grilled, and eaten joyfully in the presence of the One Who Made It.

Touching food is a heavenly gift. A sacred experience. A reminder that there is one who provides for the body. For the hand. For the gardener’s hand. For the one who would touch food and be present to the gift.

This is the way of the garden life: touching the gifts that it offers.

Photo: Artichoke

The Garden: Compatibility

Odd as it may seem, some plants are not compatible and ought not be planted together in the garden. For example, garlic and peas do not go together. The garlic does well, but the peas . . . well, they suffer. They get stunted and dwarfed. One plant might produce one pod before it succumbs to the garlic. Onions do the same thing to peas. Not a good mix in the same garden bed. On the other hand, some plants help each other. Garlic is a buddy to beets. Not only do they both have room, but their flavors are improved, too.

This makes me think about compatibility in the spiritual life. Questions arise. What might stunt my spiritual formation? What might be a buddy to my spiritual formation? Are there universal stunters and buddies? How would I know?

My inner life tends to be compatible with certain spiritual practices, but there are some that I have not tried. Could it be that there are some not yet tried that would actually improve the flavor of my spiritual formation? Are there some practices that have become rote and full of habit that they now hinder and stunt? Good questions—all.

This is the way of the garden life: a bit of reflecting on the compatibility of things.

Photo: Garlic and parsley.

The Garden: Grounded Wholeness

Obviously, the garden is a place where flowers and vegetables grow. Seeds are buried or the roots of small starts are tucked into the soil. With a bit of moisture, good light, minerals, and enough space both above and below, the seed or the start flourishes.

Roots move downward, reaching for all that would sustain the plant, and spread, offering support for the growing thing. The plant is grounded by its rootedness. Above their groundedness, the stems and leaves move upward, using the parts of light that nourish growth, and spread, giving shade below to conserve moisture.

The plant works as a whole to become a productive and fruitful organism. Like the garden flowers and vegetables, I, too, must be whole to grow into fruitfulness. Too often, I separate myself into parts that seem to be unrelated to the whole.

Exercise keeps my muscles toned. Eating whole foods maintains my digestive system. Meditation reduces reactionary behaviors. Painting frees my right brain. Writing organizes my left brain. And so on . . . In truth, everything must grown together. Nothing is isolated from the whole of my being.

Likewise, the physical, the emotional, the intellectual, the spiritual must be of one piece. Some parts sustain me, other parts support me. Some parts nourish, other parts give shade. So I welcome all of me, the hidden parts and the seen parts, the lovely parts and the unlovely parts, the fruitful parts and the unfruitful parts. It is the wholeness that grounds me. I cannot be without the all of me.

This is the way of the garden life: Grounded wholeness.

Photo: My strawberries.

The Garden: Satisfying

There is something satisfying about eating food that I have been tending for the past few months. I seem to take more care in preparing it. I dress what I have grown with greenery from the herb garden and try to avoid adding to the dish anything that came from a store. It feels more right to keep it pure and simple. It tastes sweeter, heartier, earthier.

Metaphorically, I guess I can say the same about my inner garden. There is something satisfying about tending to my being. It feels right to care for it, to dress it properly, to remove external distractions for a time. It feels right to pare and trim, to simplify myself, to let go those “store-bought” things that define what makes me palatable as a person.

I like the idea of an earthier, heartier way of being in the world, of being present, of being.

This is the way of the garden life: tending . . . tending . . . tending in satisfaction.

Photo: Romaine lettuce from my garden.

The Garden: Weedy Suffering

The thing about a garden is that the gardener must never allow the weeds to overcome. If that happens, the result is pain. Pain in the back from all the bending, pain in the knuckles from all the grabbing, pain in the elbows from all the pulling, pain in the head from too much heat and dust and sun. Yeah, when weeds take over, the gardener suffers.

It seems that this is a good metaphor for life. Too many weedy things rise up and try to conquer. If they are not checked, they multiply. And suffering comes with them. This is not the kind of suffering that comes from the injustice exacted by an oppressor. Rather, it is a kind of suffering that comes from having to remove those weeds.

Pulling weeds from one’s life is like pulling weeds from the garden soil. The roots must come with the top of the plant; otherwise, it is likely to regrow. And some weeds’ roots are deep and notoriously stubborn. Those weeds are so entrenched that they do not let go easily. These are the ones that cause the most suffering.

Why? Because they require the most persistent work to dig them out for good. Those who would tend the garden of their hearts must be tough, deliberate, and wise. Wisdom identifies those weeds that shade the heart, crowd the fruit, and invite the pests. Deliberation identifies the best way to tackle the weed’s removal. And toughness gets the job done no matter how difficult the task.

This is the way of the garden life. Weeding . . . weeding . . . weeding.

The Garden: A Dying Place

In March of this year, our family cat died. Tragic and sad. The way of all things. We buried him in the garden and planted catnip over him and flowers around him. Now, his death is nourishing the beauty of this garden bed.

This is the way of dying things: they nourish. Mysterious. The spiritual life is like that. And 2 Corinthians chapter 4 speaks to this mystery. Death nourishes life, and life intimates death. The one is a partner to the other. It is a relationship that permits the other to exist, even encourages the other to be what it is. One cannot be without the other.

A fruitful and beautiful life requires the death of things. Improper attitudes, ill thoughts, unhealthy behaviors, foolish language, unhelpful actions—all give life to what replaces them when they die. Their death creates space for the life of what is new. Their dying nourishes what wants to be born in their place.

Life emerges out of the acknowledgement that some things must die and out of the willingness to let them die. This is the way of the garden of life.

Photo: Garden Grave by ldbarnes.

The Garden of Love

Today, I read a few of William Blake's poems. I was "wowed" by them. This one felt especially meaningful. Religious "stuckness" has been floating around in my thinking all this week. This poem seemed to fit into this frame of mind. It has some powerful imagery for me to consider.

I went to the Garden of Love,

And saw what I never had seen:

A Chapel was built in the midst,

Where I used to play on the green.

 

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,

And “Thou shalt not” writ over the door;

So I turned to the Garden of Love

That so many sweet flowers bore;

 

And I saw it was filled with graves,

And tomb-stones where flowers should be;

And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,

And binding with briars my joys and desires.

                                                       William Blake (1757-1827)

Art:http://www.wordsworth.org.uk/poetry/index.asp?pageid=175

Happy Harvesting

I've been thinking about The Kingdom and harvesting. Not long ago, I created a collage based on Luke 10. The three words on my collage were Harvest Power . . .  Peace. As I worked on the collage, I kept getting the image of peace as the essence of Kingdom, Peace as the power of the Kingdom, Peace as the power behind the harvest. I like that imagery.

As a gardener who has been bringing in the harvest over the past several weeks, I can appreciate the "power" needed to be constant and intentional about tending to the harvesting. There is also something peaceful in attending to the harvest. It is a focused energy that ignores distractions for the sake of harvesting what can be harvested before the cold rains put the harvest to rest. 

Likewise, there is a peaceful power that exists in the Kingdom field. But the peaceful seems to be more a sense of something other than actually finding manifestations of peace. I am not certain what that means, but simply being present in the midst of the harvest gives me a nice sense of being at peace despite the junk going on in the world around me.

Thus, on this Hallowed Eve, I say to you, "Happy Harvesting."

Autumn's Invitation

Autumn, how I love the season. It is a time of preparation—a preparing for death. This summer my garden was abundantly fruitful. The plants did their jobs well. The harvest was plentiful. So the past few weeks have been full of taking in the harvest and putting food away for the winter. Salsa, tomatoes, green beans, wax beans, purple beans, applesauce, snow peas, peppers, dried herbs, and grape juice.

Some vegetables survive the onslaught of the cold weather—brussel sprouts and kale. But most die the slow death of shorter days, cooler weather, and mildew brought on by the rain; until eventually, they are killed completely by the first hard frost. Then, they lie down and quietly succumb to the earth. What was vibrant is now mute. What was life-giving is now life-less.

But each fruitful plant has left behind a bit of itself—one bit will nourish us through winter evenings, another bit will nourish the small garden creatures that live beneath the soil, and another bit will wait silently for the resurrection signal when it will move and emerge from its resting place in the ground and become a changed form of its parent.

Autumn is an invitation to a death—to allow something that needs to die, die. It invites me to let go of being abundant and fruitful and to lie quietly and rest. It invites me to store up a reserve for the dead days of a spiritual winter. It is an invitation to go underground into the heart’s soil—into the earth of the inner garden and nourish what lies hidden there. And it is an invitation to wait silently for the call—the resurrection cry. Then, movement and life will emerge out of that resting place, the same yet not the same, a transformed image of what I was.

Apologizing to a Pupa

Today I apologized to a pupa in a cocoon, and then I squished it.  It was metamorphosing on one of the tomatoes that I had picked from my garden. Honestly, squashing insects is extremely distasteful. I do it, not because I hate bugs, but because I dislike the destruction they bring on the fruiting plants. I kill them for the health of my garden. I also destroy slugs, earwigs, sow bugs, aphids, caterpillars, and other such undesirables. And I apologize to them. That may seem sentimental maybe even idiotic, but I do it in honor of their Creator. 

The tiny creatures that I kill are doing what they must do to exist. All the same, God made them, and I feel a bit of remorse when I exterminate them. My own belief is that God, the Creator of all that is earth, cares about all that is earthen. That is not to say that He doesn’t realize that some things have become a nuisance. Not at all. I think He sees the problem in great detail and understandingly looks on while I capture and do away with them. But I’ll not do it disrespectfully as though God gives no thought to such bothersome creatures.

Once I was having a conversation with a Christian young man who was learning gun safety so that he could go hunting with his dad. He was overly excited and exclaimed that when he was done with his training, he could go out and “kill something.” Chills and shivers crept over me. Now, I am not opposed to hunting or the killing of animals when it is appropriate and respectful. It was the underlying attitude that frightened me. He would kill without regard for the Creator of such a wonderful creatures. I think he could use a lesson in Native American respect for creation and for the One Who Made It.

As for me, I will continue to extend shalom, peace, to those earthen creatures with whom I live and with those who die for my own sense of well being. I’ll do it for the honor of their Creator because what He loves, I love.

Photo:http://www.agriculture.gov.sk.ca/Default.aspx?DN=688b2f99-ad99-423d-900c-c01a1c45d8a1

Caterpillar Issues

This morning I was grooming my hanging petunia baskets and noticed that some of the blossoms were half gone or missing parts. As I looked closer, I saw definite signs of a caterpillar, but I couldn’t find it. I scoured the plant as I continued removing dried leaves and spent flowers, but saw no worm. I turned to begin tidying another petunia plant and immediately saw a green caterpillar clinging to one of the stems of this next plant. I saw it clearly because I was farther back from the plant and had a different view from the one I had been scrutinizing. I removed the green offender and then turned back to the previous plant. I stepped back and examined from a distance. Unbelievable . . . I found two caterpillars out in the open, not hidden, not under the foliage, but right where I could pick them off and do away with them easily.

Of course, I started to think how little I see when I am in the midst of some personal issue or problem or a difficult relationship. I experience all the offending signs that something is wrong but am incapable of removing my highly charged emotions from the situation. The only remedy for this is to get a new perspective. I must step out of the situation, put some distance between myself and the offending problem, and look at it from a different position. For me to be able to do this, I must be reflective. Instead of scrutinizing the issue, I scrutinize myself. I ask myself a new set of questions like “Whoa, what is it about this that is causing my blood to bubble?” and “Where do I feel that boiling in my body?” and “What is so important to me that I am out of control emotionally?” and “What in my thinking needs to change here?” and others relevant to whatever my condition happens to be at the time. These and other questions seem to help get the new perspective that I need when I am unable to see the worm for the petunia.

Photo:http://bugguide.net/node/view/52250/bgimage

Quote from Thomas Moore

"The many great gardens of the world, of literature and poetry, of painting and music, of religion and architecture, all make the point as clear as possible: The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden. If you don't want paradise, you are not human; and if you are not human, you don't have a soul."

Thomas Moore

Thought from the Soul:

The Garden of Eden was the home of the first souls. Those souls were exiled from their garden home; and ever since that loss, a great mourning overshadows the earth and the human soul. There is a sad inner cry for Eden and a deep desire for a return to the Elysian Earth.

Lavender Festival

Right now, Sequim, WA is the place to be for all that is lavender. Such a heavenly fragrance. The "aroma of Christ" must surely waft like lavender. In the heat of the day, lavender scents the air. Brush it lightly and it releases its perfume. Its fragrance lingers on hands, clothes, and whatever else is caressed by its oils. It is an aroma that heals the soul, the spirit. So like the "aroma of Christ."