 Gardening, although uniquely concrete, is but one of the
many ways God calls us to "till and to keep" (Gen. 2:5), to cultivate
creation in all its fullness.
But since it's early May and many cannot help but dig, here are some
excerpts from a fine, and very brief, book by the gardener/theologian
Vigen Gurorian, Inheriting Paradise: Meditations on Gardening:
"So let us be good gardeners and teach our
children to be the same. Modern Christians have spoken a lot about
'stewardship' of the earth. But I think we are overly practiced at the
kind of management that this word easily connotes. We need another
perspective, another metaphor. Scripture gives us the symbol of the
garden. Adam and Eve were placed in a garden where they walked
together with God and did not need to garden. but when they sinned and
were expelled, gardening began. Gardening symbolizes our race's
primal acceptance of a responsibility and role in rectifying the harm
done to the creation through sin.
The Armenian liturgy speaks of human
beings as 'co-creators' with God. But what is meant by this
expression? Certainly not any kind of equality with God. God
alone is the Creator. We are not literally co-creators, but
sacramental gardeners. We garden in order to provide sustenance for
ourselves and the other creatures. But we also use the fruit of our
gardens to prepare the bread of the sacrament. In a petitionary prayer
of the Armenian Rite of Washing the Cross, the priest asks:
'Bless, Lord, this water with the
holy cross, so that it may impart to the fields, where it is
sprinkled, harvests, wherefrom we have fine flour as an offering of
holiness unto thy Lordship.'
The fruit of the garden is not
restricted to what we eat. Every garden lends something more to the
imagination -- beauty. The beauty of a turnip garden may be more
homely than the beauty of a tulip garden, but there is beauty in it
nevertheless. Every garden holds the potential of giving us a taste of
Paradise. Sometimes this comes as a grace that does not exact one's
personal labor, but somewhere someone has labored with the sweat of
the brow to make the garden grow. There is no ecstasy without first
agony.
Jesus prayed in a garden and agonized
there, watering it with his tears. His body, which was torn on the
Cross, was also buried in a garden. And three days after his
crucifixion, the women who wept as he hung on the Cross and anointed
our Lord's body returned to that garden to find that the seed which
they had lovingly prepared for planting had already borne a sweet and
fragrant fruit. Every garden is an intimation of the Garden that is
Christ's, that he himself tends in the hearts of those who welcome him
in.
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Let every Christian be a gardener so
that he and she and the whole of creation, which groans in expectation
of the Spirit's final harvest, may inherit Paradise. If we
Christians truly treasure the hope that one day we, like Adam and the
penitent thief, will walk alongside the One who caused even the dead
wood of the Cross to blossom with flowers, then we must also imitate
the Master's art and make the desolate earth grow green." |
