Lately I've been spending a lot of time in the garden. I mean, a LOT. While B's napping, when James is home on the weekends, when there is something I can do with B strapped in the Ergo on my back... It has been a lot of hard work, a good chunk of solitude, and some food for thought. I've been trying to remember to pray more, and one day I found myself praying for the plants I was planting. At first I felt a bit silly. I mean seriously, God has plenty of very important things to work on and many more significant, life-altering prayer requests at any given moment. I almost apologized. But then I felt as if God reminded me... No... I am in the business of creating beauty. So this ragged edge of my yard that I was weeding and shoveling and amending and planting and mulching--this is God's kind of thing. So I started to pray for my plants a little differently. That they would be a source of hope and joy because their beauty would lift our souls. That they would not be a way that I would try to impress others or mundanely improve the value of my house, but that I would increasingly see my work in my own soil to be a way to join Jesus in his work of redeeming the weed patches of the world and making them fruitful gardens.
Now, this is not to say that I think that this will be the majority of my contribution to the world. But it's a small way that I can serve my family, and the people we invite into our home, because I am working to create more beauty to fill their lives. And my own.
This morning I was reminded of all this by an excerpt I read:
"As each one of us enters into the deeper places through contemplation, we come to see ourselves in our truest being, at the Source of our being in God. We come to see ourselves each moment coming forth from our Source, and not only ourselves but all others with us. By the intuition of the Spirit we come to know our solidarity with all being. This cannot but lead to compassion--compassion for our fellow humans who are one with us in our Source.... Moreover, we will know that oneness and compassion with the rest of creation that is the source of good stewardship and a true ecology." From M. Basil Pennington in Living with Apocalypse ed. by Tilden H. Edwards, in A Guide to Prayer for All Who Seek God.
The quote was only secondarily about stewardship and ecology, (caring for people comes first!), but it resonated with me and reminded me of my blog. I think the best ecological action is founded on love of the God who made the world and desire to take care of things as he does. Otherwise it is so easy to fall into fear-based thinking about what our unsound ecology will do to the future, or to let being "greener" simply be another way of trying to outdo our neighbors with our self-regarding virtue. Neither of those is enough. I don't think they can or ought to sustain themselves for very long. They have no real life in them, and end when my fear shifts to something else or when I am not as impressively green as someone else. But if I find my life in Christ, and then can promote the life and well-being of others and of the creation, then I see no dead-ends. I think God will keep giving me energy and joy to care.
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