As I watered the plants this morning I noticed our onions had "jumped" out of the ground again. My wife and I pile dirt on top, but they keep pushing their bulbs above the surface of the soil. I suppose they were trying to tell us they just didn't feel like being in the ground any longer, so skipped my regular morning prayers and began filling a colander with little dirt clod covered red onions.

Well I didn't really skip my morning prayers, just the one in the Glenstal Prayer Book. I focused my soul on how gardening is a metaphor for how God deals with us. I prayed that though I am sometimes as inpatient as an onion who pushes itself out of the soil to kiss the air and sun, that God would use me in the best way possible. Even though I am sometimes a distraction from the patterns of life, that I would find my way out of the patterns of the world, into the colander, to be washed and cleaned and used for something worthwhile for God's kingdom.

Each morning we relive the resurrection, the Easter (or better, paschal) moment when light bursts into the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. Light gives life to the plants, then to the animals, then to us. Our earthly existence revolves around the second day of Creation, the light and dark God wove into the cosmos.

To be outside, to garden, to see sunrise and sunset, to see seasons come and go is to participate in the patterns of this world. God has called us out of the patterns of this world, meaning not that we treat time and environment as meaningless, but that we find ourselves captivated by the patterns of the Kingdom in and above all the patterns of the world. Christianity is seen too often as a replacement for "the world." That mentality only leads to pastiche or replication of "the world" with a straw-man like Christian subculture. Instead, the Kingdom supersedes the patterns of this world, realizing their full potential. Creation is good. We rejoice in it, as do many in the world, including the pagans who set up holy days preseding the Kingdom's own holy days. Yet the Kingdom does not worship the "now" of Creation but the was, is, and future of Creation, the recovery of Eden, and the hope of mankind found in Christ the King.