The Surprise Garden Revisited    Mark 4; Psalm 126

Meditation, part 1

It’s been five years since I preached here for the first time. The audition sermon for ministers in a search in our denomination is now called a “candidating sermon.” But back in the day was the “trial sermon.” Possibly that Sunday in 2013 was not the life-changing event for you that it was for me, or maybe for you, it was a trial, but the sermon was called “UCG: A Garden, However Grown.” Pretty catchy title, I thought then, hoping to impress you.

The other day, the night of the solstice, I was riding my bike at Depot Park and I saw Fred Gregory and a gathering of the Ukulele Club of Gainesville and out of nowhere Fred mentioned that sermon to me and said he actually remembered it. Thanks, Fred. Said he remembered it because I talked about compost from which grew a surprise garden where you never know what you’re going to get growing from the remains of what was.

Jesus, in his parable recorded in Mark chapter 4 offers a different name for a surprise garden. He calls it “the seed growing in secret.” Does this sound like a Buddhist koan or what: The seed growing in secret in the not-so-secret garden that is not a garden, but the left overs that got thrown away. Here’s the parable: Jesus said, “God’s kingdom is like seed flung out on a field by a person who then goes to bed and forgets about it. The seed sprouts and grows—they have no idea how it happens. The earth does it without any help: first a green stem of grass, then a bud, then the ripened grain. When the grain is fully formed—harvest time!” Tended and tilled or unintended and tossed, the greening just shows up out of the original remains, but makes something new.

My point five years ago was that we were standing then on the threshold of a new relationship, a new era for our church and for the world–a lot of change, a little however known-ness going on, not sure what the future spring times and harvests would really look like. Seeing Fred the night of solstice and being reminded of the sermon got me thinking. So I listened to the ukes awhile, rock-a-my-soul in the bosom of Abraham… ukuleles are always good for the spirit wrecked by the daily news and then I rode around awhile on my bike and pondered all the surprises that have grown up in our various life gardens.  The unexpected, varying ways our lives have gone. How has your garden grown? Is it as you’d hoped? Or far different from what you expected to have come up? Or to use Raymond Carver’s question from his amazing little poem, Late Fragment, “And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?”

It is important periodically to take stock of our individual life and our lives together–to examine what’s been, what is, and what appears to be about to burst forth. I mean, with my intentional garden at home I do that and you probably do, too, even if there are just a few plants in pots—go out there early, before it gets hot or maybe just at twilight, go out there and check on everyone. I politely ask the ambitious eggplants not to turn into blimps while I’m at work. Sniff the tomato plants and assess them for bugs while eyeing the hummingbirds zooming toward the geraniums. And pat the potato plants on their little blooming heads and wish that their deliciousness wasn’t growing in secret under the ground, but out where I could see it and then I worry a little that I really can’t tell if all growing as it needs to be. Some gardeners, as it turns out, though we say we like the surprise of the seeds growing in secret, might actually be a little anxious, a tad controlling.

Mary Oliver puts it this way:

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?
Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?
Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.

Jesus said that the kin-dom is like this: fling plenty of seeds, fling them everywhere. Work hard while you are working and when it is time, turn off the news, lay down the fear as much as you are able, maybe bury it at the edge of the compost under a watermelon rind, let your family concerns, your health scare, the responsibility, let it be, and go rest for a little bit. And believe it, even when you don’t, trust it, even there is no hope left to have, and repeat it all the next day. And one day, even out of the crumpled left overs of used to be, something new and green will come up. Maybe it will be what you expected. Maybe it will grow vastly different and maybe it will be watered with blood, sweat, and tears. But greening wins.

We talked about it last week—the truth of the surprise garden begins with seeds. Seeds hold life even greater than the sower. You do your best to cultivate the good stuff, to plant something healthy and good in your little patch of life. And then, we must rest and like Mary Oliver, take our weary selves out into the morning and sing.

 

Transplant           Psalm 126

Meditation part 2

When I was maybe 5 or 6, I heard the word transplant  for the first time.  There is no reason why I remember this.  I was with my dad at his work late one afternoon and he introduced me to a new colleague who stooped kindly, and shook my hand, “Shelly,” my dad said, “this is Mr. Shaffaer. He just moved here from New York.” And Mr. Shaeffer said, “I am pleased to meet you, and yes, I am a Yankee transplant.”

         Psalm 126 is a song for transplants, those who have moved from nightmare to dream, from planting to harvest. It is one of a collection of 15 psalms called “the Song of Ascents.” So-called because they were sung by spiritual pilgrims as they made their way, or “ascended” towards the holy city. Eugene Peterson describes them as “songs for the road, embodying a long obedience in the same direction.”

Psalm 126 is a poignant psalm for transplants, for the uprooted, for whatever reason. I suspect we all long for home–because ideally, home represents a place of safety, the source of life and belonging. And we know instinctively it is true what the great Somali poet Warsan Shire writes in her poem “Home,” no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark

This psalm is a prayer for the transplants. Those unearthed. And for us, when we curse at the radio or cry in the shower. Feel like we have just been turned out of the garden by problems or illness or loss or pain–wondering as we wander and reminded to hold on to hope. Sowing the seeds of kindness and justice and compassion and peace–flinging those seeds– that is the work we still must do, though like the psalm says, we go out weeping, still the hope lies in the truth, that as we go out weeping, we also bear the seeds for sowing.  That even as we await the harvest–that time when we will carry in the sheaves of wheat or the baskets of tomatoes or, some other evidence that what we tried to nurture (or managed not to harm, at the very least,) has produced something beautiful–that we don’t have to wait–in this day, we may choose gratitude. Wendell Berry says, “Be joyful because it is humanly possible.”

All the world is a not-so-secret garden, full of surprises. We are all transplants, uprooted and unearthed and grounded over here, moved by change, warmed by sun, buffeted by rain. I had no idea, 5 years ago, when I wrote my candidating sermon, what we would need to cultivate and see through to fruition in our UCG garden, however grown. Never dreamed how much what I thought I knew as a nice, oldish white lady about Earth and human rights and about equity and civility and the fruits of the spirit would be pruned back. How deeply we would need to cultivate truth and love and good food and beautiful art and fine music and time for reconnection and gratitude with loving companions and resilient persistence would be needed to grow in us. Didn’t know how much faith it would take to believe and practice what Adrienne Maree Brown wrote in the quotation in the bulletin,Things are not getting worse, they are getting uncovered. We must hold each other tight and continue to pull back the veil.   Had no idea how much that landscape would be tilled up and turned over, seeded by the tears of recognition, and the opening of the furrows of the heart. And I’ve been surprised how much new growth there has been and how much new greening there still is yet to coax out of the raw materials of my past experiences and of yours.

Some days it is hard to remember to be patient and to work and to wait for it, all at the same time. Because the sowing in tears and the harvests of joy are unpredictable, well, a surprise. There are seasons, though, when we’re blessed to see, even now, the harvest of some of the seeds we and others have planted, of awareness and kindness and generosity that are already sprouting up out of the compost of what was. In even the hardest day, it is there if we are able to notice it–what Hildegard of Bingen calls “viriditas,” the greening force of life, coming back because it does, again and again. It is the verdant energy that drives the surprise garden and the soul garden that we did not make ourselves and that grows beyond our abilities to control.

We are just the flingers of seeds–the loving way you have tried to treat your children and other people’s children is greening in them some sort of kindness that keeps growing. The restoration and the justice and equity we are working for, some of it is sprouting today. The rest, well, it may not be harvested for years, maybe decades. The smallest experience of shared kindness is seed flinging, it is finding the best new soil in which to move the tenderest transplants. It may look different than we expect and take longer, maybe.

Somebody once wrote that most of us wish that grace and love would strike like a flash of lightning but I think it may be true: real love is more like a vine.