by Elizabeth Caldwell

As I write this article, it is the beginning of winter in Chicago. Today the predicted high is 16 degrees and tonight’s low will be zero. The soil in which I work is hard and crusty, like a cold, dark quilt covering the bulbs planted in the earth, waiting for their time to awaken and show their colors. As you read this article, the hope and promise of fall planting have now been revealed in the spring renewing and awakening of the earth. It is God’s plan, this cycle of seasons.

. . . for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land (Song of Solomon 2:11–12).

I know that by March, when it’s still cold and snowy here, in other places in this country it is already spring. It’s about this time that I send the first e-mail to my friend and neighbor, Kristi Bangert. It’s a reminder that there are only two months before we make the first visit to our favorite gardening center to buy plants for our porches.

We live in the city, and we create our gardens in containers and window boxes on our decks. We go together to buy our plants, usually on the second weekend of May. It is the first of several trips, since we also plant containers in the front of our condominium building and in a small patch of ground near the parking lot of the building next door.

Sacred time
This is sacred time for Kristi and me, a good example of kairos, sacred time, time not measured by the clock, chronos time. For a few hours on a Saturday morning in spring, two gardeners renew the earth with color and harmony and in the planting are renewed themselves.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted (Ecclesiastes 3:1–2).

It takes us several days, sometimes a week, to get our plants settled in their new homes. We think about colors, light and shade, heights and shapes, scents and textures, and blending — all important factors in designing a garden. And when the gardens are complete, we take time to look at each other’s creations and we give thanks for another year of planting.

One year we had a particularly nice spring Saturday in May (for Chicago). I stayed outside all day. It takes time to plant a garden. Neighbors walking up and down the back stairs commented on my progress.

That evening, when I was still outside on the deck at 6 o’clock, a neighbor finally said, "You’re still here? How can you stand it? It’s so much work." I replied, "It’s not work. It’s joy, sheer joy."

Roots of faith
Gardening not only provides a window of color on my deck and on a small plot of ground next to a concrete parking lot, it also opens a window for my soul. I think one reason Kristi and I look forward to our gardening time each spring is that it is so different from what we do in our work during the week. It is a change of pace that slows us down and connects us to God’s creation and the stewardship of the earth. It is also a hobby that we share as friends. Gardening nurtures our souls.

... O God of our salvation, you are the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas ... you make the gateways of the morning and the evening shout for joy. You visit the earth and water it, you greatly enrich it; the river of God is full of water; you provide the people with grain, for so you have prepared it. You water its furrows abundantly, settling its ridges, softening it with showers, and blessing its growth. You crown the year with your bounty; your wagon tracks overflow with richness (Psalm 65:5, 8–11).

Gardening connects me to the roots of my faith. My mother is a gardener; she taught me about God and God’s care for me through the theological lens of God’s work as creator and sustainer of the earth. The ways that seeds are gently nurtured in their growth and the work of our hands in enabling that process form a vivid example of the life of faith. We live on this earth in community with all creation. As we live and move and have our being, we are interconnected with every living thing. This is God’s plan. How we respond is an example of the ways our faithful living is demonstrated.

Sabbath and connection
In the summer after the garden is planted, the work of weeding, watering, and feeding the plants becomes a weekend priority. To wake up on a beautiful Saturday morning with nothing to do but greet the day and work outside in the earth is truly sabbath for me. When I am working in the flower bed next to the parking lot for the condo next door, neighbors walking their dogs or going to their cars will often stop to comment on the beauty of the garden, sometimes just to say thank you. Geraniums, daisies, impatiens, hosta, and lilies bring life, color, and greenness to the dark heat of the concrete that defines city living.

I met Sister Joan one day when I was working in the garden. She lived two buildings to the north and worked a small plot of ground at the back of her building. She had been admiring the cleomes in our garden, and I had been admiring her Queen Anne’s lace. We exchanged plants that summer. As we were talking she reminded me that gardens were meant to be appreciated for what they are: not permanent but to be enjoyed for the time that you have them. Sister Joan has moved from the neighborhood, but I always remember her when the Queen Anne’s lace from her garden reappears each summer. Gardening connects me with my neighbors.

My gardening space on the deck is small so I’m not able to plant vegetables, but I am able to grow herbs. Lemon verbena and lavender provide wonderful fragrances. Parsley, dill, rosemary, basil, oregano, and thyme grow well in Chicago and are wonderful for cooking on a summer’s night. Gardening feeds my soul and my body.

Renewal and recreation
Last summer I had a difficult time finding one particular plant I wanted for my garden, cleome.

It’s a tall plant that offers myriad colors of blossoms — pink, dark purple, and white. Some seasons I have been able to find it as seeds or as a plant. This year, I couldn’t find either one. It seemed my garden would not be complete without it. In August, I was weeding in the flower bed and discovered a very small cleome plant. It had come up from seed dropped from a plant from the previous year. I was so excited to see it there and then to watch it grow, producing beautiful blossoms.

When I thought I would not be able to find any cleome for this year’s garden, I began collecting seeds. Friends and family in Tennessee were put on alert and began collecting seeds for me from their gardens. I noticed cleome growing in gardens in downtown Chicago and the gardeners working there helped me harvest seeds. So now I have a nice collection saved for the next planting. Gardening enables my participation in God’s renewing and recreating of this earth.

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? . . . Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you — you of little faith (Matthew 6:25, 28–30).

Gardening also requires getting the space ready to receive the plants. Kristi and I usually meet each other several times on the stairs as we trek up and down carrying all the stuff that makes our garden complete: pots, chairs, plant stakes, garden art. There’s a reason that I stay outside all day planting and getting the deck ready after we return from our visit to the gardening center. I want to wake up on Sunday morning and greet the sabbath in my garden and begin my late spring season of morning meditation there.

My back deck garden becomes an important setting for my spiritual life in the summer. Summer reading is carefully selected — books to be read slowly, a little bit each morning as I sit in the garden with a cup of coffee. Gardening is a spiritual practice for me. It slows me down, connects me to the earth and to the Creator who is always a mystery, yet always near.

. . . Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior (Isaiah 43:1–3).

The poet Wendell Berry has been writing sabbath poems for the last 25 years. In his most recent book of poetry, Given, one of Berry’s sabbath poems says, "leave your windows and go out, people of the world, go into the streets, go into the fields, go into the woods and along the streams."

He reminds us to

(from Wendell Berry, Given, Poems [Washington: Shoemaker Hoard, 2005, p. 124])