Someday I hope to be able to listen to my garden better.

Someday I hope to be able to listen to my garden better. You see, we have a somewhat problematic relationship.  For I think in some far reaches of my brain, I view the garden through the same lens that I few myself:  I do not see what it was intended to be, and so I see only the flaws.

It is an easy trap to fall into in our current media saturated world.  None of us are thin enough, smart enough, glib enough, or possess enough of any other shallow attribute that passes for character in the world these days.  And so the weeds of inattention overtake the ground, choking out all that is intended to be there.

Having spent the last six days in the company of 60 eleven year olds and a crowd of people for my mom's 93rd birthday, I awoke on this, the Sabbath, with a heart unable to partake of conversation with another living soul. So against the tide of my own inner Legalist, I took the day to rest and renew in the company of what was created by the Giver of Life and all things good.

That journey took me to the North Creek boardwalk, uninhabited in the morning breezes.  At the end of the pond trail, I stood in the middle of a symphony of frogs, meadowlarks, red ring blackbirds and a lone duck on the small pond.  Gentle currents pulled underwater grasses like tendrils of hair weaving through the cat tails, and the ragged silhouette of tree tops scratched the canvas of the sky.  This was the worship music my soul craved, and this was a cathedral no man could imagine nor build.

 

As I neared home, the tangled mess of the garden around the pond called to me.  But once seated with unused new tools and facing the tumult ahead, my heart grew weary.  "How do you eat an elephant," popped  into my mind along with the immediate answer...."One bite at a time."  And so it began.

Part way through the discouragement that choked me like the ivy clinging to rock and wood and stone, robins began to cheer me on.  Rich, raw dirt smells filled the air; the soft breeze ran through the small pile of collected debris.  And then it hit me: The Creator declared it good. The Creator blessed the earth with these birds that sing, these plants that grow in such infinite variety so as to defy chance, this sun that arises each day at His command. 

Though this same Creator gave us the creativity to imagine roads, and medical miracles, and skyscrapers, He does not look down on our man-made structures and declare these works of ours to be "good"...it is only what He has crafted through His loving, merciful hands…which includes our often tangled, weed choked selves.

 

No wonder I find myself so often distant from this Grace instead of drawn to it.  I spend my days in the evidences of the work of the hands of mankind, with its tyranny of rush and worry.  My eyes are saturated with the images emanating from LCD screens and computer monitors.  My ears hear only the ringing of phones and beepers and cries for more and more of the little self I have left at the end of each day.

But someday, I will learn to better heed the voice of the garden, for there are lessons to be learned there: The weeds are more numerous and deeply rooted when not sought after daily and removed; the old debris of previous seasons muddies the water when not washed away.

But more than anything, without spending time in this garden's presence or beside a rippling stream, or gazing down a glacier covered mountainside, I would miss the handiwork of the Creator --- the symphony of praises from His orchestra, the moss covered rocks which, if I were to remain silent, would still cry out His name.

I would miss this Sabbath, created by Him, necessary for life itself, to pause and sing my own grateful praise.