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To Garden with God

Posted Jun 4, 01:27 PM | 4 comments | by Editor | Link

By Christine Sine:

Over the last few years I have become a passionate gardener and so have been intrigued by the growing interest in gardening, particularly vegetable gardening that has been one of the widespread responses to the recession. A growing number of churches seem to be converting their green lawns into vegetable gardens. Even Michelle Obama is planting an organic vegetable garden at the White House.

I am particularly intrigued by what Stephen Bartlett is doing in Louisville, Kentucky. Like me, he has a passion to help people discover not just the joy of gardening but also the wonderful lessons that we have to learn about our awesome God in the midst of the garden. “Soil is miraculous,” he says. “The amount of thriving life and myriad interactions between the life in just one handful of soil is beyond the human capacity to understand.” (Read the entire article)

I find Stephen’s approach refreshing because I believe that this current trend for vegetable gardens will not survive beyond the current crisis unless we develop a theology that not only recognizes God as the master gardener but that encourages us to learn about God from our gardens and connect to God through our gardening.

Genesis tells us that God created Adam and Eve and placed them, not in a wilderness but in a garden “to work it and take care of it.” Even more intriguingly, we learn that God walked in the Garden of Eden with them. This doesn’t surprise me because I always feel that God still walks in the garden with me today. Celtic Christians believed that creation was translucent—the glory of God shone through it, and monasteries first planted gardens in an attempt to recapture something of the garden of Eden. The garden is alive with lessons about God’s love and faithfulness and generosity. How easily we take for granted the rhythms of the seasons that sustain and nourish all of life and rarely give a word of thanks to the God who has ordained these patterns.

I started gardening because Tom and I wanted to produce some of our own vegetables, and in Seattle a garden is not quite a garden without a couple of tomato plants. However my passion for gardening grew as I started to unearth the many lessons to be learned from the garden and began to discover, like the Celts and monks have long before me, that the glory of God was revealed through all that I was doing.

I recently held my second Spirituality of Gardening seminar—something that even six months ago I never thought would become a part of my ministry. At the same time I have put together an e-book on reflections, prayers and garden techniques from my 15 years of gardening called Gardening with God. Working on this book of reflections has been a really fun project even though it has added more pressure to my life than I like. Over the years I have thought a lot about where and when I encounter God in the garden but it is really only as I sat down to write that I was inspired and awed by how wonderfully God was revealed through all I saw and did.

I am intrigued by how much of what I do in the garden is a metaphor for life and what God is doing in my life — from the planting of seeds to the producing of compost the garden is an incredible assurance of the faithfulness of a loving, caring God who is intimately involved in all we are and do.

I read about the resurrection in the Bible, I experience it every time I plant a seed and watch it burst into new life. I read about God’s generosity, but I experience it every summer when the garden overwhelms me with 200 lbs of tomatoes. And I believe that God wants us to live sustainably, but I am convinced of it when I pull a 100 lb of squash from my plants and there is no hole in the soil to show where it has drawn its nourishment from. God’s methods of production are all sustainable and renewable.

There is another dimension however that I am just starting to discover what orthodox Christians have known for centuries — the sacramental nature of gardening. In his delightful little book Inheriting Paradise: Meditations on Gardening, Vigen Guroian shares his own reflections as an Armenian orthodox Christian. As I read his book, I wondered how differently would we view God’s creation and our faith if each time we planted a seed we entered into an experience of the death and resurrection of Christ. And what about if we saw the watering of the garden as a partaking in the baptism of Christ after all each time we water it does bring new life to the plants we are tending.

The Bible uses so many garden and farming metaphors — from the parable of the sower and the separating of the tares and the wheat to the imagery of the harvest. We are all impacted by these but rarely understand their significance. Gardening teaches us to live in more relaxed and sustaining way. It connects us to the very heart of God our creator and also to the ways of Christ our redeemer who is constantly planting, pruning, fertilizing, and growing our lives into the ways of the kingdom.

This does not mean that everyone needs to become a gardener, but I do think it means that all of us need to take the time to reconnect to the God revealed through creation. In the midst I think that many of us will discover new depths to the love of God that we never knew existed. Maybe all of us need to enter more fully into the story of God as it is revealed in the created world around us. Why not meditate on this verse from Isaiah 45:8 as a start:

You heavens above rain down my righteousness
let the clouds shower it down.
Let the earth open wide,
let salvation spring up
let righteousness flourish with it;
I the Lord have created it.

Christine SineChristine Sine is co-founder (along with her husband Tom) of Mustard Seed Associates, a passionate organic gardener, and a contemplative activist.

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Welcome to the Reader's Forum

1Jason Smith 06/05/2009 06:53 AM

Christine,

I love it. I don’t know if you are aware of the Boise Vineyard’s garden. I think they produced 130 tons of produce for the poor and underprivileged last year.

I have a young man in my church that has a vision for doing the same here in Rural Nebraska. Lots of details to work out.

But, my wife and I are gardening with a family in our church. They are “experts.” He even has a horticulture degree. I am just manual labor at this point. My wife is enjoying it much more. And learning tons.

I will make sure she reads this article.

Thanks,

Jason

2nic paton 06/05/2009 12:49 PM

Christine
Thank you. This missive is inspiring, prophetic, and incarnational.

I’m drawn vegetable gardening in the many ways you describe: the economic, the creative, the aesthetic, and the sacramental.

Futher thoughts from my neck of the woods are in this post called “My agricultural revolution” on http://soundandsilence.wordpress.com/2008/12/10/my-agricultural-revolution/.

3rick 06/05/2009 11:12 PM

Christine;
I love your meditation on gardening. Growing up in California, gardening was punishment. Disobedience and teenage rebellion were treated with agonizingly boring sessions of weed pulling in my mothers weed infested garden under the hot sun. Yet my secret joy was the volunteer artichoke plant that grew without cultivation like a weed next to our house and provided many delicious summer lunches.

In my early 20s, on impulse I volunteered to be in charge of the garden in a short-lived Christian commune in the Northwest. Over the years I have learned much and have come to love vegetable gardens. My particular mission has been to promote modest suburban home vegetable gardens. I have kind of considered myself the Johnny Appleseed of suburban gardening. I have owned 6 houses and in every yard, built the best raised bed garden I possibly could. Every time I’ve sold a house I leave instructions for the garden as my gift to the new owners. Over the years I have learned by attending seminars with Peter Chan about the mindful, meticulous craft of his raised bed gardens, to reading about Masanobu Fukuoka’s No Tlll Garden popularized in his book, The One Straw revolution. I’ve enjoyed the wisdom of Ruth Stouts lazy straw bale gardens, experimented with Frech intensive double dug gardens, read about the very British Sir Albert Howard’s studies about composting in India and learned from J.I Rodale’s farm in Emmaus Pennsylvania.

I have learned that deep tilling creates deep root zones which allow close interplantings which creates a self mulching garden which smothers weeds. I have learned that healthy, untrampled, compost-rich soil requires no artificial fertilizers and less water. Instead of suffocating Broccoli plants in pesticides I have learned simply to examine the plants and squish the invasive green caterpillars. I found that winter gardens are practical even in the cold dark Northwest. Last year, a winter of unseasonably deep and long lasting snow in Portland, I could dig under the 2 foot drifts covering my garden and harvest healthy, crisp Mustard greens, Kale and Pak Choi for spicy winter stir frys. Above all I have learned how incredibly productive a small space suburban garden can be. I inspect my garden carefully in the morning before I commute to work and the first thing I do after parking the car in the garage each night is to wander through the garden, munching on the early ripe strawberries hiding beneath bushy leaves, picking fresh lettuce and herbs for dinner.

Gardening to me is joy, I feel like I am participating in grand process of life. And why shouldn’t it be so? The human race began in a garden, Jesus’ life ended in the garden of gethsemane. In His resurrection He was mistaken for the gardener (which He really was, because after all He designed and planted Eden’s garden) and our eventual future takes place in a garden described in the book of Revelation.

4Theresa Seeber 06/13/2009 09:55 PM

Oh, thank you for sharing! I have been trying to create a garden in my yard for some time, but for me that is very hard because I live in a desert with 50 mile an hour winds! I am doing a lot of brickwork to keep weeds down, and hoping to get grass growing again (we used to have it but it has returned to God’s design for our area – dry, stickery weeds! LOL). I dream of these lush, green gardens with smooth, slippery stones and windblocks, and flowers galore. Your emphasis on the spiritual in the garden reminds me of the times I have spent centering – experiencing God through nature. I was doing it before I even realized it was a thing to do, as a teenager walking down the dirt road to meet my school bus. :-) I will continue to seek him in my ever-growing garden, and I thank you again for sharing. You have inspired me!

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