Morning Gardening and Simple Prayers

Gardening and landscaping are full of spiritual lessons. The plants at our church never stop teaching me things about God. The tenacity of the plants around our church in retaking the land that we so rudely claimed as our own reminds me that the earth is old, and its purposes are deeper and older than our own. God’s creation will still be working and growing long after we are gone.

Thomas Turner of Everyday Liturgy has written a piece about the spiritual lessons he learned while pulling red onions from his garden.

As I watered the plants this morning I noticed our onions had “jumped” out of the ground again. My wife and I pile dirt on top, but they keep pushing their bulbs above the surface of the soil. I suppose they were trying to tell us they just didn’t feel like being in the ground any longer, so skipped my regular morning prayers and began filling a colander with little dirt clod covered red onions.

Well I didn’t really skip my morning prayers, just the one in the Glenstal Prayer Book. I focused my soul on how gardening is a metaphor for how God deals with us. I prayed that though I am sometimes as inpatient as an onion who pushes itself out of the soil to kiss the air and sun, that God would use me in the best way possible.…Read More