The Seeds of Lent

The Seeds of Lent February 10, 2016

California Sunset
California Sunset

For the past several months I have been on the road for my dissertation research on the spirituality and landscape management of Catholic monastic communities in the American West. Over the holidays, I stopped over in Southern California as I always do, to spend my birthday and Christmas with family.

Coming back to the home where I grew up is always interesting. My stable identity as student and scholar gives ground to the shared identity of brother, son and uncle. I feel happy, excited, lonely, misunderstood, deeply loved all at the same time. Unanswered hurts and questions rise to the surface. Things said and things left unsaid.

My body knows I am home. It instinctively knows where plates go from the dishwasher, where spices are for cooking, where the recycling goes, which doors are hard to open, which piles of stuff in the pantry to search through for batteries.

The holidays are always a family affair, and once the gift giving and extended family dinners are over we settle into the daily rhythm of each other’s company. Before I headed out on the next leg of my journey, my mother and I planted a garden. Because Southern Californians can garden year round, and it hardly ever frosts, I had given her a half-day Garden Retreat as a gift. We would spend the morning in the garden, and she had to leave her phone in the house so that Real Estate clients could not interrupt (even though they still did).

We got some seeds and soil and got to work. I pruned the small apple and pomegranate trees I had planted years before, and fertilized them along with the avocado, lemon and nectarine trees. We harvested a garden box planted to sweet potatoes. Digging out the small delicate tubers we talked about her chickens and her horse, about the dream of a small retirement farmstead; about getting older, about life after graduate school. About romance and love.

After the potatoes were all in a paper bag (they are probably still there), we spread new compost in two garden boxes that lay along the back fence of the yard. We laid out rows for kale, lettuce, arugula, cucumbers, zucchini and snap peas. Dark soil in our fingernails, the sun was out and we chatted and laughed and hoped the seeds would germinate. We watered the beds, taking in the smell of wet earth.

The next day, as I headed out, I thought about the garden, tiny seeds buried in the earth. I felt a pang of hope that the seeds would germinate. That we planted them right. Over text, my mother and I worried about the seeds. The peas are germinating! The kale is up! Why aren’t the cucumbers coming up? The zucchini? Some of the kale isn’t growing…Were the seeds bad? Maybe the soil was missing something? Or maybe the garden didn’t get enough sun through the large Eucalyptus trees that border the backyard?

We often speak about seeds in relation to their fruit. It would be tempting to see the success and failure of the garden as reflection of my relationship with my mother and family. Yet, the simple act of planting the garden with someone I love was itself a kind of fruit. Our texts and conversations now center on this small space in the world that we both helped create. We both want it to flourish, but it doesn’t always work out. We fret and worry, and hope and wonder what might be wrong. Always hoping that what we put into the soil will grow. I probably won’t eat any of the fruits from the garden this year while since I live in Vancouver. If the tender plants germinate, outgrow the weeds, survive the bugs, and get enough sun they will make it into a few Sunday dinner salads and my family will feel the joy of eating something that was grown by the work of our hands.

This year for Lent, I have decided to follow Christine Valters Painter Lenten reflection on fasting, but I am not giving up any one thing. As she writes I will:

  • Fast from being strong, and holding it all together. Be Vulnerable.
  • Fast from anxiety. Be Trusting.
  • Fast from speed. Give Holy pause.
  • Fast from multitasking. Behold.
  • Fast from list making. Allow Unfolding.
  • Fast from certainty. Embrace Mystery.

Not all the seeds we plant will bear fruit, but to persist in the planting of seeds is itself an act of faith that cannot help but bear us fruits of both body and soul.


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