Yo howdy All Y’all.
It is a beautiful day. Our garden is a funny place, encompassing all four sides of the half-block pasture embracing our church. Our “little country church in a hilltop field of lantana and sunflowers”. Funny to find that in downtown Austin. Nestled as it is between a parking garage, County and Court offices. A high-rise jail, Courtrooms, a dome of religion, the State Capitol Dome and sunflower banks. Cascades of weeds, flowers in your face, fat weeds, skinny weeds, and weeds that grow in cracks. It is funny – where it seems every weed can start a new garden!
“Let it Be” is a Beatles song. “Let go and let God” is a rewarding gardening mantra…generally followed. There are tweaks and transplants, trimmings, sometimes weekly waterings on the edges (oddly, not necessary this July); the gardens have been cultivated to self-maintain; weeds sustain themselves. The sunflowers, however, do best when harvested daily.
Our herbs are doing well, we’re still delivering pounds and pounds of herbs and kale, but most of the produce harvesting this year has been direct distribution. Folks leave the okra on the stalks, but there has been regular harvest of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, watermelon and cantaloupe. A bunny or two have been eating the Brussels sprouts, kale and chard. The bunnies are curious and cute.
Our gardens are a fun place to engage with friends, strangers and passersby. As a congregation, we each need to invite our friends and acquaintances to share our church, acknowledging that worship service is intimate, and that for many being inside a church has been to experience hypocrisy guised as Christianity. Our gardens are outreach, gifts to the street – flowers, food, a place to engage in sanctuary with others.
Along San Antonio Street, spiritual nurture is offered for back-seat passengers on the way to booking. Offering the peace to deeply breathe to clerks, bondsmen, courtroom occupants, people leaving jail, and our live-in neighbors (most of whom are housed).
Along 12th Street engagement includes folks involved with State government. During this legislative Special Session the table and chairs will be set up Friday afternoons on the Be Prepared Porch and Patio. We’ll have a bucket or two of sunflower blooms to give away. We’ve had some interesting visitors drop by – State Senator Sarah Eckhardt, State Rep. James Talarico, U.S. Representatives Lloyd Doggett and Greg Cesar. They have all been invited back. Please consider coming by, bring a friend or have one bring ya, invite an acquaintance or two to enjoy our gardens and engage as we are to become what we can be as a congregation to grow. Invite those weeds you know, if only to enjoy a drive by by themselves, but also encourage them to walk about, sit and enjoy the views.
We are a special church. Our “little country church in a hilltop field of lantana and sunflowers”; our “Hill Country cathedral” with gentle edges and deep roots as disciples of Christ.
“And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, nor shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and the foreigners.” – Leviticus 23:22 NLV Phil