I have not always been a lover of the earth… I have always loved the sea and the water. It might be because I grew up being surrounded by seas. There is something magical in the smell of the salty water. It seeps deep into one's being.
As a child, though, I was a very reluctant gardener. Actually gardening was a chore…. My mother was an avid gardener but the chore of pulling the weeds seemed to be my lot.
Several years ago I planted an herb garden in our backyard. I love creating new recipes with vegetables, herbs, spices but it was putting my hands in the dirt and planting the herbs that began to shift my way of being around the garden. As the plants started to grow, I discovered that there is nothing quite as delicious as fresh-picked basil on tomatoes with olive oil and mozzarella. It is truly a spiritual experience. Herbs became a passion for me.
Our parish Lenten theme this year is Soul Gardening. In the last few months I have been purposefully and intentionally meditating on the images of the garden while working on various activities, retreats for Lent. We are so intimately connected to the experience of the garden…
Genesis 2 and 3 contains for us the vivid first images of incarnation, crucifixion and redemption. … We see them being woven to the whole redemptive story of God.
God created everything. Then comes the amazing part: God planted a garden. The hebrew word for to plant is nata. God did not just create the garden, but planted it… God was personally involved in preparing the soil, sowing the seeds, irrigating them...
God pronounced everything good. God put Adam and Eve in the garden to take care of it and nurture it. The garden is full of the glory of God… everything is at peace… God and the whole creation are enjoying the incarnation… Everything is good… purely good… blessed…loved at its core…
Here comes the Serpent with the lie… There is something missing… God isn’t really all that good. If God was really all good then why would we not be allowed to eat from the Tree of Good and Evil… I love the way Ann Voskamp, in her book One Thousand Gifts so wonderfully brings to life the Fall:
“It’s the cornerstone of the Devil’s movement. That God withholds good from God’s children, that God does not genuinely, fully, love us. Doubting God’s goodness, distrusting God’s intent, discontented with what God’s given, we desire … From all of our beginnings, we keep reliving the Garden story. Satan, he wanted more. More power, more glory. Ultimately, in his essence, Satan is an ingrate. And he sinks his venom into the heart of Eden. Satan’s sin becomes the first sin of all humanity: the sin of ingratitude. Adam and Eve are, simply, painfully, ungrateful for what God gave. Isn’t that the catalyst of all my sins? Our fall was, has always been, and always will be, that we aren’t satisfied in God and what God gives.
...We eat. And, in an instant, we see. Everywhere we look, we see a world of lack, a universe of loss, a cosmos of scarcity and injustice. We are hungry. We eat. We are filled … and emptied. And still, we look at the fruit and see only the material means to fill our emptiness. We don’t see the material world for what it is meant to be: as the means to communion with God. We look and swell with the ache of a broken, battered planet, what we ascribe as the negligent work of an indifferent Creator (if we even think there is one)."
Sin entered into our world… We were ashamed of what we left behind so we hid from God… God is walking in the garden in the cool evening breeze… “Where are you?” God calls out to Adam and Eve… The answer is obvious, we did what we were not supposed to do… and we were afraid… We knew we lost the love…
God confronts them: “Why are you saying that you are naked? Did you eat from the tree that I told you to not to?” The blame game begins…
Even after the sentence is spoken, God does not let them go… Genesis 3:21 writes that God made coats of skin and clothed them… This is the foreshadow of the coming sacrifice. God will continue to seek after us; we will not be left alone... Grace and mercy will never be withheld.
I continue to dig in deeper into these stories, images, words... As my seedlings emerge and are waiting to be planted in the soil, I await the fresh blessings of God who continues to seek...
