Project Grow

Yesterday we had our first Project Grow gardening session in the Edible Garden here at FCH. Gardens are great places to think about our life with God, and our garden here is full of reminders too.

The Edible Garden is hidden away at the side of the campus. There are lots of wonderful fruit trees growing there in this place that most people at the university don’t know about. It’s a reminder that it is so easy to miss the fruit in our lives – to fail to notice it and to forget to give thanks. Stopping to look back and be thankful can be very helpful. One way to do this is to look back over the previous 24 hours and seeing if we can collect five fingers of gratitude – five moments, experiences, things we did or saw or enjoyed, for which we can be thankful…

As some of you know, there’s another practice that I find very helpful, called the examen or the review of the day. In the evening or the morning we make time to look back over our day with God’s help, replaying it, asking what was the most life giving thing in it. Where did we connect most deeply to ourselves and to God? I have a little notebook and every morning I jot down a + moment, and also a – moment, because its interesting to notice what the most life draining moments were too.

When we have identified the most life giving thing – an activity, a conversation, a moment – we can spend time remembering and savouring it – not just rushing on into the next day, but ‘harvesting the fruit’ of the day before. Enjoying it again, and giving thanks to God for it.

At the moment the Edible Garden is not what it was. It’s become rather neglected and overgrown, and not very fruitful, apart from the trees. But our group yesterday did amazing work, revealing the paths, and preparing the soil, ready for a new garden to be planted – a new garden of herbs and flowers.

Jesus must have spent many hours watching the farmers all around him preparing the soil, and seeing what happened to the seeds that were sown. No wonder he turns to this image to describe the way our lives may or may not be fruitful.

Like the path in the reading, we may recognise that our lives can sometimes be trampled hard by our experiences, closed up to God’s gifts. Or that our initial enthusiasm for something from God may fail to penetrate deeply enough into us to take root. Or that the good things that God wants to grow in us can struggle to thrive in competition with the strong impulses of our worries and needs and wants. But we also be able to see that where there is some ‘good soil’ in our lives, things can – amazingly – grow.

Weeding and clearing the soil in our garden was hard and dirty work, involving forks, spades, hoes and fingers. It reminds me of some words by Sharmila Meadows. She was reflecting on the recent TV programme about Freddie Flintoff, the cricketer, and the way his own accident and injuries have opened him up, helping him do some amazing work with a group of disadvantaged boys. This reminded her of her own experience of burnout. She says ‘God showed me that while externally I might be more bereft, internally I was so much richer, richer because when we are pared back and vulnerable, our hearts present the fertile soil that God requires for his purposes.’

It’s worth going to have a look at the Edible Garden if you can – or just going to spend time in a garden near you.  It’s a good place to reflect on the harvest of our lives – on thankfulness, on fruitfulness, on the good soil, and on the deep roots of the trees.

Loving Father, it is so easy to miss or forget the gifts that we receive each day. Help us to notice what is life giving for us, and to savour and enjoy it.

We thank you for all your good gifts.

We thank you too that you grow good things in our lives.

Where our lives are overgrown, clear a space for your good seed.

Where we have become hardened, soften us and open us up to you.

May your life become deeply rooted in us, as we become deeply rooted in you – and may our lives bear the fruit of your love.