We love gardening and gardening has made its way into sermons and conversations for years. So, we joined the Edgewater Community Garden in May 2020 and began working our little garden plot and meeting neighbors who do the same. Part of God’s calling to us, in settling into this neighborhood, was to encourage the great things being done and the perseverant leaders already present and active, just like God’s Spirit…active in this place before we ever set foot here.
This past summer, previous leaders of the community garden stepped away and at their request, Millyellen agreed to serve as coordinator and more deeply invest in the lives of the community gardeners. The first language of about 60% of the gardeners is Spanish, so she fumbles through using the Spanish she knows, utilizing Google Translate, and speaking with the children who in turn translate with their parents. What an opportunity for Millyellen to grow!
Part of the responsibilities included pruning the common apple trees and learning how to prune the trellised grape vines. Now, about these grapes, they are the best tasting grapes we’ve ever had. And I don’t mean just on those hot, shadeless days in the middle of summer as you walk under the trellis on your way through the gate, grab a handful of the sweet, juicy drops of deliciousness. No, they are really delicious seedless grapes compared to any we’ve ever had.
To prune grapes the way most Oregon Vintners do, you cut them back to a fraction of their size between November and the end of February. So, after research, we settled on the plan and figured we’d take some cuttings from the vines we pruned and see if they’d grow. Those of you who know us well, know when we commit to something, it’s hard to get us to release. The weekend for pruning came in early February and with it an ice storm that wreaked havoc on our little Edgewater Neighborhood. Undeterred, we walked the 8 blocks from our new home to the garden in freezing drizzle to work. Frozen vines draped over the trellis were untwined and cut back to promote fruiting in the summer, hard as it was to imagine in this frozen mess. Pruning is difficult to execute on a tree, bush or vine. How much or how little should one prune? What pruning is most beneficial for the plant? Likewise, when God sets to pruning our lives, it’s difficult to experience, can I get an Amen?!?
At the end of the pruning process there was a pile of frozen brown vines, stick-dry on the inside and frozen on the outside. At our new house, there’s no living thing except for a postage stamp of grass out front…maybe we could grow some grapes? Everything Drew read told us to be undeterred by what looked dead and prepare a couple buckets with shredded coconut husks (more sustainable than peat moss) and some nutrients. So, we mixed in some soil and brushed on root hormone and stuck these little 6-8 inch sticks the width of a pencil into the fluffiest excuse for soil we’d ever seen. It literally looked like 4 pencils sticking out of a 5-gallon bucket. Our hope was for 2 good vines and we felt like 8 cuttings made the probability of success good, so we began to water our buckets of pencils...for weeks.
The thing about winter is …no one knows how long it will last. But in the lives we live on this spinning, beautiful, broken, hurting, and healing earth, we never know what a single day will bring, much less a whole lap around the sun. But in the cold of winter when a sunny day arrives, we inevitably find ourselves shutting our eyes and facing the sun with arms outstretched trying to soak in as much Vitamin D as we can, not knowing how many of the next several days will be dripping and drizzling in grey twilight that lasts from dawn to dusk.
For us, the frozen cold of winter has been a metaphor for the dark night of the soul. St. John of the Cross penned the words centuries ago referring to those times when the silence in the dark of night can be almost soul-crushing as we await God’s answers, miracles, explanations, or any hint of His presence or Their awareness of our pain and grief. Most of what we write on this blog has the optimistic tone of how things work out and the good things we pray will come. As you can see, we haven’t written a blogpost since last fall. Many chapters have cliffhangers or even deep, deep sadness. Friends, the winter of our waiting on God’s answers and options, fruit and signs of hope have been so mixed over the last few years. But this past winter, has been one consisting of relentless prayer through the darkness, seeking the light of Jesus. Struggling in prayer over the faith of teenagers who wrestle with topics and culture and seeing their pain in that dark night or cold winter, without the experience of a lifetime’s experience that “God’s answers are seldom early but never late” (C.S. Lewis). We have those lifetimes’ knowledge and experience and even so, the waiting and straining in prayer is just hard! Unanswered questions and requests and the associated disquiet in the soul is crushing! We beg God for those answers – for us AND for them. We pray and sweat and would let our own blood if it would get a response out of God. In my desperation in darker moments of this past winter, I clearly understand the actions of the baal worshippers in the story with Elijah on Mt. Carmel as they beseech their idol-god to answer them. But ours is not an idol-god, nor is our god idle. Our God is active and our faith and hope secure. And still the dark night of the soul continues.
But with all this, we know that sometimes God doesn’t answer our questions and the painful, heart-wrenching waiting lasts through interminable winters. A.J. Swoboda, in his new book, After Doubt (2021, p. 120), reminds us that “tending” is central to lives of faith. God called Adam and Eve to tend the garden; Moses, David, and the Good Shepherd tended sheep. There is a focus on care and a positioning that is open to God’s speaking into their long, silent moments. Tending allowed them to take time and look more deeply…with eyes to see God at work, not just look at their surroundings. Tending the soil in the garden will increase its health and the health of the plants. And our ever-loving God tends us. The Good Shepherd will not let a single sheep be left lost and alone without inviting it back to the flock. But tending is not a synonym for answering. Sometimes God tends us while not answering our questions in these long months or years of winter. And all we can do is faithfully hope and trust that new life will come and that God is present in every moment of the long, viscerally painful, silent waiting.
Our life at times has resembled the pruned frozen sticks that did not appear to have life in them. But, with the dawning of spring, those grape vine sticks…8 for 8 have buds on them! What we couldn’t see under the soil surface was God feeding, growing, tending, and nurturing. Happy Resurrection Sunday dear friends! Jesus isn’t dead, He is alive. Happy day to celebrate our Lord Jesus Christ and celebrate the new life we have in Him.
Beautiful. How exciting to see life in those sticks. May this be a frequent reminder that, seen or unseen, God is at work.
Greetings from Lancaster....What a beautiful blog and lesson! You only have to look outside in the spring (or anytime) to see that God has, each day, given us a beautiful season to rejoice and praise Him. Thank you for the words above and good luck with those grape vines :) Miss you all.
Just prayed for you. Teenage faith is difficult to navigate. Be strong and courageous.