ADVANCE    I Go to the Garden        In the Spirit   10 10 06     Kay Young

 

“Christianity offers its basic belief in divine enfleshment, its theology of embodiment in which God, human beings, and everything else in the cosmos are knit together.” 

p. 206-07  Sallie McFague,  The Body of God: an Ecological Theology.

 

   This fall morning brings a freshness and a beauty to my yard, blowing leaves from nearby trees, and the best of this year’s rose offerings, coming after such a long, hot summer.  I look at the spray of water from the hose and see in it the rainbow.  That delicate mist brings life-giving water to a late-blooming clematis, a heavily-laden ornamental pepper plant with an arrangement of tiny yellow, crimson and deep purple fruits, and fall flowers ready to burst into bloom.  And I thank God.  Saturday mornings I go early to the market place where farmers who grow organic produce bring their offerings to Redding.  I thank God.  As often as I have time, I walk the river trail and delight in the changes the season is bringing, watching the swallows dart this way and that, after gnats and mosquitoes, or river animals and birds, resting on their way to winter homes.  And I thank God.

  Sometimes I think ‘thanking God is easy when we live with such abundance.’  Thanking God is easy when we only consider our tiny area of life.  And, because the Scriptural Job is on my mind as I read the lectionary and its suggestions for Sunday readings and sermon, I think of all those who do not enjoy this bounty of God’s creation.  I think of those who, through no fault of their own, must live without running water, without kindling for firewood, who draw lots because of the danger involved each day to go without protection in search of these life-sustaining gifts from God.  Mostly they are the powerless among humanity: children and women. 

   And I think of Job who, through no fault of his own, suffered losses and grief of such great magnitude that we wonder at his ability to keep his faith in God, we wonder at the stamina and hope he must have sustained in order to continue living.  And he thanked God.  How much greater a statement of faith is the gratitude of Job than when I go into my safe garden ‘while the dew is still on the roses,’ and thank God.  But wait!

   My thanks is important though.  It is just that I must remember that to whom much is given, from that person much will be required.  The first should be last and the master must become the servant.  I must think of emptying myself to the world.  I can only really change myself, become open to the Christ within; I cannot change someone else.  When I do this, I discover the deep, real ‘way’ which Jesus speaks of, which the Buddha taught, which those who steep themselves in Native American customs and beliefs are able to live.  My thanks, my thoughts, my gifts can actually bring the beauty of the garden to others.  But my thanks, thoughts and gifts must come from an emptiness, from a letting go of my own selfish concerns, to a place of including all creation as ‘brother Sun and sister Moon.’^[1]  I do not go to the garden alone.