6 lessons from the garden

and a funny video I couldn't post to social

Now that finals are over, I have more space to write and be creative, hence the onslaught of newsletters. When it rains, it pours so enjoy the frenetic nature of my life. You don’t have to like gardening to understand what I’m about to write, yet I still do think everyone should have a garden because it makes you pay attention. I was telling people that having a garden means paying attention. If people spent less time on social media, they would collect hours of attention back + better their mental health + feed their family + be less enraged at what their Aunt Doris thinks about tariffs. So that is my pitch and I’ll leave you alone about it (no I won’t bc it’s peak gardening szn).

But humor me and let me tell you something about God and what I’m learning by walking the garden throughout the day.

1. Nature tells us about resurrection every minute of the day. It’s screaming about it. Not one death of a plant is wasted. Even if a tomato falls, and you don’t see it, those seeds will burrow into the ground and produce fruit the next season without me doing one thing. If it doesn’t produce a plant, it surely produces food for those around it. The soil honors every life lost. Death is always bringing life, it can’t help it. Because that it what God does, that is how he created the earth and it is not about efficiency, it is about goodness and abundance and experience and nourishment. Even in death, the soil says, RISE AGAIN!

2. Plants tell us about God’s abundance. Every plant wants to nourish and built into their DNA is a never ending cycle of resurrection. Like right now I’m looking at a radish and arugula that I didn’t pick because I wanted it to bolt (stretch high to the sun in it’s old age) and then in a last burst of energy, flower. Then it dies, but the flowers make seeds. One arugula plant gives me 1000 seeds, not an exaggeration. I will pick them and save them with gratefulness but the seeds have already fallen, promising a future harvest that I have nothing to do with when spring comes. I didn’t water it, I didn’t provide the sun, I didn’t shelter it from the cold. I only went on with my life, semi forgetting the miracle right outside my windows.

   

   Arugula is pretty! Nature tells us aging is beautiful!

3. Pruning seems counterintuitive. But I am not saying anything that hasn’t been said before: It creates more fruit and helps the plant grow healthy. If you don’t, the plant gets out of hand, fruit is hidden and rots on the vine. Which, as already stated, even that gets used for good. However, it’s not about usefulness necessarily. Instead, I am more concerned for what is best for the plant. I honor that plants hard work and I want it to thrive, so I pick off, very intentionally and gently, the parts that won’t help her. Certainly if that is a thought in my head, it says something about how God deals with us in pruning. He isn’t mean and He is certainly not vindictive. He is precise and careful and wants us to thrive. And pruning also creates life. I prune my basil, set in water, and then watch roots from to make an entirely new plant. The thing that was cut off produces even more life. This makes me less resistant to God’s pruning because if He does this with nature, how much more with me?

   

   These are leaves I pruned from my tomato plants. Look at those roots!

4. People think gardening is about weeding. What are weeds? Just things people told us are weeds? Some of them are quite beautiful and provide ground cover which keeps moisture in the ground. I leave a lot of them because I don’t want to spend time picking them, it takes away from my care for the plants. Weeds are always among us, they flower too, and bees still pollinate from them. It reminds me of hyper focusing on sin. If you’re always looking at your sins, you forget about the good stuff. I know that is a temptation for me, and growing up in baptist/reformed circles who focus so much on how sinful we are, it became a very shame-filled experience. I forgot that I was good. I forgot that God saw me growing and reaching for the sun and bearing good fruit. And some of those weeds, weren’t weeds at all! Someone with a pulpit and an agenda said so though and I made some sort of agreement with it. But hey, God didn’t leave me there. I’m undoing it, or God is, gently unraveling me from a gnarly invasive weed called complementarinism. If that offends you, you must have not read my previous newsletters *big teeth smile emoji*.

   

   These are all tomato, lettuce, garlic, radishes, and a couple weeds chillin with the big dawgs jam packed in the bed. The more, the merrier!

5. Plants do better with eachother. In the garden, more is more. The soil has been conditioned and can handle it. There is no competition, everyone is just bearing their fruit and enjoying one another. What a picture for society! They do better when they’re together, touching each other, sometimes using one another to help grow. A cucumber plant has tendrils, little hands, and they grab onto other plants to propel them across the ground or up a trellis and no one complains. I provide sticks and trellis and string to train them up, but it’s all very gently and attentively. I have a plan for where I want them to grow so all they have to do is just be. That reminds me of God with us. There is so much striving and it is for nothing because the truth is, God has the plan and the plan is for good. For much fruit. For thriving. For being together in community.

   

6. Still, the garden tells me about reality. There is the intended way of life and then there are things that mimic harsh reality like disease and moths and depleted soil and inattentiveness. Things die, and rot, and squirrels eat seeds I planted and I yell at them. I walk the garden and I see that bad things and I ask myself often, “Imagine if everything I put my hand to, thrived?” Because that is what Genesis 1-3 is: Everything was good, there was no sin and there was not death or shame. The garden tells me that I live in the middle, the now and not yet, the place where we wait. It’s a place where we do see the kingdom inaugurated but Jesus and things are good, I see glimpses of eternity out here: abundance, nourishment, I plant—it grows, symbiotic relationships. And I see death, I toil and it is fruitless sometimes. I’m out here living in Adam’s curse, Eve’s too, for that matter. But even this tells me something about God. I long for something better. I know in my heart that this isn’t how it’s supposed to go, just like I know war and starving children is very bad. My very DNA cries out, NO. And so I pray for Jesus to come back, my body aches for Him to fix what we can’t: conquer evil and death. This fills me with hope, otherwise, I am overwhelmed with despair. But remember, He has the map back to Eden.

I leave you with a snippet of Layne, who created an entire character out of picking up a sword. He would not let me post to social media but since none of his friends subscribe to my newsletter, I think it will be ok to drop here. We say, “This years harvest was very prosperous…Good work.” often now. He makes me laugh and I’m so glad he’s home for the summer.