“Thank you for your patience with me!” exclaims the bedraggled weed growing in the cracks.
“You’ve now witnessed my blooms many seasons!” say the various “ugly” dried stalks of seeds and dead leaves filling gaps in the midst that feed and shelter the singing birds.
Thank you beloved Church folk, for your patience with the process of growing gardens beyond our walls of sanctuary in which we also celebrate the abundance present when we follow the teachings of Jesus.
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” -Matthew 22:37-40
Yes, thank you Church – our gardens are in their natural state: self-seeding, self-sustaining, kinda ugly from some perspectives. Life events have kept me away for a couple months from gardening, yet by Grace our gardens still bloom and are producing even without rain and with only incidental water. Affirming is that so much is still growing – some visibly, more surviving in the soil. So many wildflowers are ready to thrive and bloom again in coming seasons. As rough and tumble as our gardens may look now, we do have cascading waves of bloom in the years ahead.
From my own recent inattention to active gardening, I have grown to appreciate the “ugly” expired sunflowers – attracting birds to gather on the rust-colored dried-stems, picking apart the lingering pods. Eating some seeds, letting the breeze scatter-plant some others. It is possible the tall clumps of white asters and plateau golden-eye (now mostly dried leaves), will yet bloom again before winter if we receive some rain.
It is now, however, the season to nurture and garden, and your help with this is always welcomed. We have a Church “Work-day” coming up – look for the date! There are small areas all over our campus that need some minutes of touch: seed pods to harvest, hand-scissor trimming, sign placement, sweeping and such. Some stuff can be done seated, and there’s even some pick-ax work to be done (although Maxine has called “dibs” on that).
Thank you Church, for understanding that our sanctuary is one we open to all, beyond walls. Our neighbors are our passersby. Even if they pass by just once, we engage them with the presence of joy we experience accepting the messy challenges and opportunities to be Christ-like.
We must affirm in all we do – not so much as a denomination of Christianity – to be d disciples of Christ. In giving our Love to our Creator by gratefully acknowledging our space as Sacred because we share our sanctuary to welcome, affirm and nourish all our neighbors. Our neighbors appear as ragged and ugly weeds, vagrant squirrels, migrating bugs, misfits, exotics, noisy birds, strangers, diminished defendants or simply lost. As Disciples of Christ, we welcome all to experience sanctuary. “They will know we are Christians by our love…by our love.”
Be well know joy. Phil
(Any day, btw, can be a day in our gardens, no work-days required…)