After having become overgrown with wire grass from years of neglect, my hope is to restore this plot behind our unit in VMRC's Park Village to full productivity. |
Here we are two months later, already blessed with some beans and tomatoes. Check here for another update later. |
In the Revelation we are told that in the new heaven and the new earth there will life giving trees bearing abundant fruit every month of every season, and on each side of the water of life flowing in a fully restored and forever Eden, rather than in a gold-paved metropolis.
Gardening is in our divine DNA, and we are never closer to our creator than when we are tilling the soil, planting seeds, irrigating and caring for earth's life-giving vegetation, and harvesting and enjoying its abundance.
The soil in which growth occurs is made up of dead and decaying vegetation and other kinds of former life, but is also teeming with microorganisms, worms and tiny insects that are continuously at work tilling and fertilizing the earth and drawing on its resources.
When we plant seeds in this mixture of death and life a kind of resurrection miracle occurs. Seeds themselves experience a form of dying and new birth, sending down roots for nourishment and emerging as life-giving wonders that are then prepared to die--to give up their life--so that we and other creatures may live.
In similar ways, loving and caring for each other and for the earth is our first and most urgent responsibility.
Here are stanzas 1 and 4 of hymn #788 in Voices Together, the words of Mary Louise Bringle:
The garden needs our tending now--
the water, soil and air.
The very rocks and stones cry out
for stewardship and care.
Creation groans, awaiting still
the consummation of God's will.
While people die in poverty,
some lives are thick with waste.
The prophets warn us, "Simplify!"
Their challenge must be faced.
Creation groans, awaiting still
a church responsive to God's will.
Refrain: Earth shall be green and new,
Eden restored, Terra viridissima. *
* Latin for greenest earth, inspired by a phrase from Hildegard of Bingen's Viridissima Virga
Here's an updated photo showing what the good Lord and a great growing season can do on a plot of ground that had become overgrown with wire grass and which was suffering from years of neglect (7/29/22 photo):
Abundant green beans and tomatoes to enjoy--and share with some of our VMRC neighbors. We also had lots of sweet corn we grew in a neighbor's unused plot and were able to relish and share. Delicious! |
2 comments:
Tilling? Really Harvey. I can almost imagine with you, Adam with his bright red rototiller roaring through Eden tearing up the wire grass into smaller pieces, each of which will produce a new plant (oops). (Maybe wire grass came in after the Fall?) How does God grow new soil in the prairie and in the forest? Doesn't he "grow" it up? God piles the growth of the previous year on top of each past year's dead growth. The rich soil of the prairie wasn't developed by tilling. We can, of course, speed the process by mixing various sorts of organic matter to speed the decomposition rate and make a habitat congenial to earthworms and the rest of the microherd the helps produce new earth.
"The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it." Genesis 2:15 NRSV
Seriously, I mostly agree with you, even though I might make exceptions for some really compacted soil that may need some preparation for planting. But thanks for your good gardening advice.
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