Lent 2012, Week 4

Fast from worry; trust in Divine Providence

Fast from discouragement, be full of hope 

                As a gardener I had never anticipated becoming an author. My first book was released in the spring of 2011 with two other manuscripts currently in flow to be published. The publication of my first book required an unwavering trust in the Divine hand. This is the story of how the first little book came to be.

                For several years I had coordinated volunteers at St. Francis Retreat Center in DeWitt, Michigan, and with them created prayer and memorial gardens on the center’s grounds. Several volunteers and retreatants wanted to know how to create their own outdoor prayer spaces, so I developed a program to help them with the process.

Recently unemployed and having the necessary time, I compiled all of my program materials and wrote the book A Garden of Visible Prayer. I felt almost immediately God’s attentiveness to this project; nearly the entire book was hand written in the Adoration Chapel. It wasn’t until I shared the typed manuscript with a journalist friend that the concept of publishing was introduced. A seed of hope was planted…a very small seed mind you, and one that God personally tended.

Over the next eight weeks my world would dramatically change. It was almost as if I were in a little boat on a fast moving stream shooting white-water rapids without a paddle. If God would have spoken, I could imagine him saying “Get in, sit down and hang on. We’re going for a ride.”

The events that followed were lined up by His hand. My phone call to the Catholic Writers’ Guild found the president unexpectedly at home that afternoon. A member of the guild had paid double tuition for the upcoming writer’s conference and I was the recipient of their generosity.  I was offered to share the drive to the event in New Jersey and would not have to pay for transportation and as a volunteer at the conference, my lodging would be paid. And surprisingly, because of a cancellation, there was one slot left open in the book pitching sessions which were booked six months in advance.

I was humbled and dumbfounded. I shared with a few friends what had transpired in the past week and word quickly spread. In a matter of days checks arrived to cover the last of my expenses…food.

Considering all the events that had taken place with no real effort on my part I should have been at peace, but I wasn’t. I was going half way across the country with people I didn’t know on money I didn’t have into an industry I knew nothing about. I was nearly overcome with fear at the prospect of what I was about to do. The morning of my departure was spent in the Adoration Chapel again seeking my Lord, and once I found Him and took hold of His hand I didn’t let go for the next ten days.

It wasn’t until the sixth day of the adventure that the book was pitched to a publishing editor. I stood in the hall with fifty other writers all waiting for their seven-minute pitch session with various Catholic publishers. The anxiety was nearly suffocating as potential authors waited their turn. So far that morning no one had successfully secured a publisher. I was surprisingly calm for I knew all of this was out of my hands. I hoped that my book proposal would please the editor. I hoped I would be open to hear why my book was insufficient and how to improve it. I hoped I wouldn’t faint.

I sat down with the most gracious woman I had ever met.  She asked a few questions, asked for my written book proposal, asked if I had a completed manuscript I could send her that afternoon, and then handed me her business card. A business card was confirmation that the manuscript was worthy of publishing. My breath caught in my throat as I stood to leave. The golden ticket, her business card, was in my hand.

Going through the exit door and into the far end of the hallway, I said nothing to the watching crowd as I held up the golden ticket. A roar of recognition exploded with cheering and applause and shouts to one another that the gardener had succeeded.

There were a few more twists and turns along the way to being published. But all through the process I knew it wasn’t about my book…it was His book and He had prospered the works of my hands (Ps. 90:17b).

I will be eternally humbled by God’s attentiveness. Whenever I face discouragement or worry about my writing, I have proof that everything is in His hands. I simply hope to be open enough to cooperate with his will.

Lent 2012, Week 3

Fast from pessimism; be an optimist

Fast from harsh judgments; think kindly thoughts

                I had secured a work-study job cleaning and washing glassware for a lab in the Botany and Plant Pathology Department at Michigan State University. I had changed majors from horticulture because I couldn’t keep up with the class load and work requirements. Botany and plant pathology offered me a way to continue to work with plants and incorporate a growing awareness of my being a systems type person.

                It didn’t take long for the graduate students and professors of that floor to realize I did not fit in. I was from Detroit, had not attended high school and did not have the necessary foundations for research. I was also not good at small talk and usually remain silent rather than bumble my way through luncheon conversations.

                I was judged, at times harshly and often for good reason. I didn’t have the exposure to sciences and mathematics that the younger students, fresh from high school, had acquired. One particularly painful event took place while a graduate student was doing research utilizing dry-ice. I had never seen dry-ice before and asked about it. He did not hesitate to tell me that he thought I was being coy and my question ridiculous.

Like most people I too wanted to feel that I was contributing in some small way. I had worked within the labs for over a year and asked the professor and aforementioned grad student if I could do something besides wash…like maybe learn about their research. They decided to let me run a test of growth hormones on seedlings. I was excited and asked for instructions on how to proceed. They asked if I knew how to grow seeds, and of course as a gardener I could, and answer yes. They handed me multiple bottles with mixing directions and said “Then just go and do it.”

For months I carefully tended, measured and recorded. The morning after the study ended, I confidently turned in my results…only to be mocked during lunch. The study was flawed from the start. I was simple and ignorant of research protocol that they knew so well, and they had just proved to me and the rest of the staff how ignorant I really was.

I left the program. I was no longer optimistic about a future that would revolve around plants.

It was easy to judge them as harshly as they had judged me. It was easy to be self defeating and a pessimist. It meant I didn’t have to try anymore…failure was unavoidable so why make an effort.

I didn’t take classes during that summer’s break. As I puttered about the yard of the rental house near campus, I eventually came to realize my true nature. I was by birth a gardener with grubby hands and dirty knees, not a scientist. The Botany Department’s assessment of me was overly harsh but still contained a kernel of truth. I sincerely hoped they would succeed in their research…it would benefit so many people.

And I would succeed as a gardener, for we are optimists those of us who plant a seed.

  

Lent 2012, Week 2

Fast from negativism; be positive.

Fast from complaining; be grateful. 

                The piece of ground on which I planned to work was choked with weeds, riddled with tangled bramble roots and armored by canes of wild roses. Small boulders and saplings warned me of the challenges ahead. This unused piece of land, a wilderness consuming two thirds of my city lot outside Detroit, was set in my mind to flourish and be fruitful.

                I began to dig. I dug with determination and a sense of hope and joy in my heart. I buried all the comments about the impossibility of my endeavor. A song in my spirit shored me up for the work that lay ahead.

Artist, Charlie Harper

                For there, just below the surface, beyond the boulders, brambles, roses and roots lay a soil teeming with life and possibilities. I needed only to find my way in.

                I found my systematic approach to clearing the land gradually bending. The reclamation plan of doing A then B soon gave way to the functionality of focusing on one small area at a time and slowly moving into the next tangled mess.

                Arduously I labored. Every shovel thrust seemed to meet with resistance from imbedded rocks hidden beneath the soil. Every sapling seemed to have a root system that belied its small stature. As I unearthed obstructions I was surprised by the amount of glass and rubbish that was also buried there. What I had thought to be uncontaminated land turned out to be somebody’s dumping ground; the weeds merely hid their sins.

                It wasn’t long before I had mounds of limbs and roots to burn. The stones had been carted off with larger rocks rolled to the side. The granite boulders were part of this land and would remain. Now exposed, they offered a foundational beauty. The weeds that had been piled in an out-of-the-way location were beginning to break down and would in time compost enough to be nourishment for the soil from which they were removed. The old bicycle tires, plastics, and glass rubbish had been bagged and discarded.

                Eventually the little piece of land, my back yard, was cleared and the smooth dark soil lay soft and clean. It had been resurrected and was ready for new life. It would now serve a purpose of fruitfulness and beauty. I would lovingly attend to the dwarf fruit trees soon to be planted and the flowers and herbs that would accompany them through the seasons. I was grateful for the gift of perseverance.

Lent 2012, Week 1

Fast from bitterness; turn to forgiveness.

Fast from hatred; return good for evil. 

                It was a relatively small patch that I had dug at the back-end of the yard to the rental house; I was planning a vegetable garden. I was an undergraduate at MSU, being a decade older than my class mates, and knew that growing my own food was a necessity; I did not have parents supporting my education.

          I dug a portion of the sod and broke up clumps, picked stones and broken glass from the soil, raked it smooth and mounded the edges to help direct water. Purchasing seeds, I then planted the early season crops of peas, radishes, kales and a few herbs. I planned in a few weeks to purchase starter plants for vegetables that took longer to mature such as eggplants, tomatoes and peppers.

         I returned home rather late after classes one day, about a week later, and again headed to the back of the yard to water the seedlings before sunset. A few feet away I stopped dead in my tracks, saddened by the state of my garden patch. The mounded edges had been kicked into the lawn,  two thirds of the patch had been covered over with pieces of hand-dug sod and the remaining third was trampled. Apparently I had unknowingly encroached into the neighbor’s property.

         Disheartened, I cleaned up what remained but knew I did not have enough time in my schedule to expand the now even smaller patch.

Soon afterwards, as weather permitted, I planted starters of tomatoes and eggplants in the remaining section of garden. In another garden area bordering the house I tucked in some zucchini seeds.

Throughout the summer when I was in my room, I would often hear the neighbor mowing his yard and anxiously hoped my plants were safe. They were often covered in lawn clippings but never really damaged.

It wasn't long until the fruits of my labor ripened and canning and freezing commenced. There is something about tomato and zucchini plants in that I always underestimate their production. Even with the smaller plot I had an overabundance.

Photographer: Travis Juriga, 2010

Washing the vegetables I looked out the window over the kitchen sink. Sitting in the shade of a large sycamore tree I noticed the woman who lived with the man who mowed the lawn that covered my plants with debris. What I saw was just another woman on a hot August day trying to find a cool place to sit. I had lived next to her for almost a year and never knew her name. After all, I was just another student in the rental house next door.

Picking up a small cardboard box, I carefully laid newspapers in the bottom and up the sides. I placed a few small zucchini to one side and then piled several large tomatoes on the other. I took a deep breath and in a tee-shirt wet and stained from canning headed out the screened side door.

Approaching the woman I introduced myself and held out the box of vegetables. I could tell by the look on her face she was surprised to see me. I think she realized for the first time that I, the student next door, was closer to her own age and not a teenager.
        As she accepted my gift she seemed dumbfounded by my presence. She never rose from the lawn chair nor told me her name. Avoiding eye contact, she spoke a barely audible “Thanks.”

Feeling rejected, but without bitterness, I turned away and went back to my kitchen to continue putting food by. Looking again through the window I noticed my neighbor had left her shady area and taken my gift with her.

That September I found a room in a house closer to campus. Before I moved away I kicked the mounded edges of dirt into the little patch that had been my garden, smoothed it over and dusted it with seeds for new lawn. I patted down my pant legs and ‘shook the dust from my sandals’, I knew I had already moved on.

Lent 2012

A Lenten Fast

I like the season of Lent, it is a time to ‘reset’ my balance point. It is a spiritual time for fresh seeds and new growth. The word Lent is derived from Old English lencten which means ‘lengthen’ and refers to the increase of daylight hours. It is a period of transition from late winter to early spring…the time of developing roots.

When I returned to the church as an adult, Lent took on a new definition from that which I had been taught as a child. I no longer saw Lent as a time for suffering through meatless Fridays and weeks without candy, or attending solemn church services under the dedicated watch of habited nuns.

I’m not a catechist who teaches about the Church and don’t know all the formal rules and fancy words for this liturgical season. What I do know is that it is a time to practice prayer and charity, a time of offering up to Our Lord little bits of myself.  

I and many Christians ‘give up’ something during Lent. I don’t remember exactly when the concept took hold, but at some point I chose ‘to do’ something rather than ‘not do’. One year during a late winter retreat a small handout was distributed and the idea of  ‘giving up’, or fasting, took on a whole new purpose. Here is what it said:

o     Fast from bitterness; turn to forgiveness

o     Fast from hatred; return good for evil

o     Fast from negativism; be positive

o     Fast from complaining; be grateful

o     Fast from pessimism; be an optimist

o     Fast from harsh judgments; think kindly thoughts

o     Fast from worry; trust in Divine Providence

o     Fast from discouragement; be full of hope

o     Fast from anger; be more patient

o     Fast from pettiness; be more mature

o     Fast from gloom; enjoy the beauty around you

o     Fast from jealousy; pray for trust

o     Fast from gossiping; control your thoughts

o     Fast from sin; turn to virtue

Maybe I should consider hanging this list on the fridge for more than the 40 days of Lent.

Winter

Seeking Food
(Journal entry, winter of 2011)

                I like to feed the birds, and consequently the mice, deer and squirrels benefit.
           It is mid-January and a light snow has been falling most of the day. The birds are hungry for suet and sunflower seeds to keep them warm, and I have joyfully obliged them by filling the feeders.

                I watch the coppery fox squirrel as it hops across the snow in my neighbor’s yard. It climbs the utility pole and deftly walks across the wire over the busy road. Making a ninety degree turn, it follows the wire across my yard to the stately white pine and makes a short leap into its boughs. I know it is heading for the fresh supply of seed.

                I’d decided during the previous week to stop fussing over the squirrels that visit my avian food source; I’m sure Saint Francis is proud of me. Instead, I stopped at the feed store and picked up some corn and peanuts for the frisky visitors. From the shed I rummaged a large saucer feeder and its chain, hung it about six feet away from the bird feeders, filled it and waited for my furry friends to find it.  It is bewildering to me that, over a week later, the corn and peanuts are still relatively untouched.

                The squirrel has now dropped from the pine boughs and totters across the stockade fence. It leaps down into a smaller evergreen, scurries under the bird feeders to another shrub, wiggles its way up between the branches, hops on the window sill and with a determined leap hurls itself on the thistle feeder. With one more little hop it reaches the final destination and lands on top of the feeder with sunflower seeds.

                This is its routine, a well known course to acquire a few morsels of food. It has habitually followed this path and never looked off to the side where a much more nourishing feast awaits.

A more filling bounty is so close. It lies just beyond the meager bits of gratification found in the routine of  daily life. All that is needed is to break a habit and go beyond what is so familiar.

Releasing Constriction

Girdling

The beautiful ten foot Colorado Blue Spruce suddenly took a turn for the worse. Something was killing it and the groundskeeper asked me to have a look. The usual causes of sickness had been eliminated; the soil was tested, the fertilizer checked, watering evaluated and common pests researched. Whatever herculean effort was extended to find a cure was minimally effective and at times the decline appeared to accelerate.

As I scooched on my side under the boughs I noticed the tell-tale sign of a narrow bulge around the base of the trunk. Scraping off the mulch and pulling back the ground cloth my suspicion was confirmed; a piece of hemp wrapped around the trunk had not been cut free from the ball when it was planted several years ago. The tree had been girdled.

To kill a tree or shrub doesn’t take a lot of effort or chemicals. It is a rather simple task, one that a mouse can complete in a matter of hours by chewing through the bark in a ring around the trunk.  This damage to the vascular system stops the flow of nourishment from tree to root and starvation is imminent.

A more frequent form of girdling is caused by carelessness. I have seen it too often. Hardwoods that were added to the landscape years earlier show sudden signs of decline. Often it is the crown or a major branch and sometimes, as with the Blue Spruce, the whole tree is affected.

This type of girdling is a result of something barely noticeable. It can be a nylon string, wire or band left behind on a branch when a tag is removed. Or as mentioned, a simple piece of rope cut from the burlap but not unwound from the trunk. As the trunk or branch grows and increases in circumference, the cord left behind will strangle this otherwise healthy specimen.

I think of how careless words can girdle the hearts of children, as when they are made to feel insignificant or worthless. A simple phrase spoken with meanness can stunt a portion of their development. When the same harsh words are repeatedly spoken they twist into a rope that, when left undiscovered, destroys what looks to be a sound and vibrant being.

A fortunate few seek to find the mental constriction. When they discover the forgotten band or twisted rope of words that had lain hidden for years, un-girdling their hearts is liberating. The binding is removed and if not too late nourishment once again flows, slowly at first and often with fits and starts.

Like the tree or shrub a scar will always remain where the constriction had occurred, becoming less pronounced as healing takes place. If the damage is deep and nourishment blocked for too long, thriving will never be an option. One cannot recover what has died and I worry about those whose hearts have hardened. I wonder if like the Blue Spruce they too will wither away.

I scan the landscape to spot the tell-tale signs of constriction. When I can I do what I can to promote healing, even if it is simply to pray. The first step is to pull away the debris.