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. ... more