In the Garden Shed with God

I’m not Catholic but I’ve always liked the notion of a confessional booth. The story in BLUE LIKE JAZZ when Don Miller and friends constructed a confessional booth on Reed College’s campus was my favorite part of the whole book.

If I were to build a Confessional booth I would want it to be a happy place.

It would probably look more like a garden shed.

I think gardens lend themselves nicely to the sort of place one ought to go to confess things.

Something about being around all that dirt reminds a person of their true signficance apart from God.

And then all those flowers are indicative of what God can do once we let him dig down deep into us.

We tend to think of it the other way around. We tend to think we need to dig down deep into God.

That confuses things.

It’s God who is doing the planting, the weeding, the creating.

Meanwhile, we’re just the dirt and manure and beauty in the making.

Gardening sheds, I think, make the perfect place to hang out with God, confess a sin, share a dream, discuss how we can go about creating together a better world.

Or at least our little corner of it.