A Day in the Garden

Yesterday, Good Friday, we most gratefully received two welcome insightful blog postings from Tim and also Susan … both long-time members of QHP Core Community.  Enjoy!

A Day in the Garden

     Life is quiet these days.  Maybe staying home more, working less, and being acutely aware of the people in our lives, may serve to help us reorder our relationship to the Earth? 

     Gardens are quiet.  Ever hear a plant grow?  The gospel reading today summarizes the Bible – and it’s all about the garden.  It begins in the garden in prayer and the arrest, and, it ends in the garden tomb at rest.  “In the beginning,” the Garden of Eden – and – a community of peace surrounding the Tree of Life (Revelation 22).  Alpha and Omega, from beginning to end – it’s about the garden:  a world created/recreated, a natural environment ordered/reordered by Creat

     In Scripture it’s helpful to remember, the day begins at night, at sunset, in the darkness.  So Jesus’ arrest in the garden of Gethsemane at night is actually the beginning of a rather long, arduous day of intense silent work.  And this is what helps us make sense of  I AM hanging from the tree, proclaiming “Sabbath” – “It is finished.”  That’s what Creator said when work was done.  Please stop.  Rest.  The seed planted will die only to rise and grow.  Life is to come again, much like you know it, yet so different.  The noise of Egypt is behind and the celebration at the Jordan is to come. Today we are drawn to the garden, to the tree of good and evil, in silent wonder we pray the Passover with the Earth.

            Peace to you this day of distance and death, and creation and completion.

- Tim –

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“Opening Words” ~ Based upon John 3:16 ~ written by Roddy Hamilton, 

Gather round

I have a story to tell
of one who reached inside himself
and took a handful of love
like a pile of stardust
and said: this is for you
            it is all you need
it is all you will ever need
there is enough here
to change the whole world
take it

            many laughed at him
mocked him
and ignored the invitation

but some dared to take it
            and those who did
noticed something about this love
they found they could do what the gift-giver could do
they could stand with the lost
-welcome the traveler
-eat with the hungry
            they found themselves doing what the man first did to them
-give something of themselves to others
they became like the man
offering themselves
and as they offered themselves
others took the invitation
and many still do
and many still trust it is enough to change the whole world

- from Susan Butler-Jones -