From Soil to Soul

The fruitfulness of spring and summer is over, and the beautiful fall hues surrounding us color our streets, valley and lives, prelude to the white landscapes to come. After the harvest from the garden - bright red tomatoes, golden wheat baked into a brown communion loaf, green basil - comes a frigid rest, the first frosts and an early snow having already arrived in our valley. The Jerusalem Cross Garden lies barren and empty, necessitating a shift in the focus of these blog ramblings - from soil to soul.

The faces of a small group of faithful men spring to mind. We have been meeting every Wednesday morning at 7 a.m. at our little church for about a year now. And first things are happening each time we gather. One, a new day begins with that vital cup of coffee (Fair Trade) and the friendly banter and fellowship of common purpose. Two, engaging the Word and the Three Simple Rules (do no harm, do good, and stay in love with God) we submit to the truth that life is not all about us.

The group is not the most handsome or holy. There is Wally and Jay from Ski Hill; Randy, Tony and Dale from down Icicle Road; Bruce from North Road; Charlie from up the Chumstick; and yours truly from here in town. And the gardening quality of persistence in their commitment to the cultivation of their own souls and those of the rest of the group, is yielding a harvest in each of us. We are all being fed. And truly, no loaf of bread from any garden, Jerusalem or otherwise, is proving to be so nourishing for life as him who is the Bread of Heaven.

Much More Waiting to be Birthed

It felt like a wake! In the early hours of this new day, again I stood with Gilfillan, my Brittany pup, on the banks of the Wenatchee River, holding vigil. The Chinook salmon, those liquid shadows in the waters, kept place in the steady flow of the current. And in the pregnant stillness, as voiceless fish waited their time to spawn, much more than a new day and a multitude of tiny fry awaited birth.

The summer run of Chinook, arriving this fall, was predicted to be good. And it has been! "Keeping watch" like the faithful few on Golgotha of old, I have been visiting the river most mornings. Today I saw the first one - the lifeless, soon to be mutilated, body lying in the shallows of the crystal clear waters. Having laid her eggs, her purpose to give life being done, this Chinook salmon was dead, and it was difficult not to feel the weight of this magnificent creature's great sacrifice, her death a gift to us in the generation of fish to come and the nutrients of her body that will fertilize our valley. Life coming through death.

How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given...a Christmas carol?... when creation's Good Friday in the river before me weighs my spirit down? But then followed victory! Relief came in a wondrous affirmation of faith, written boldly across the same heavens in which a star once led wise men to a humble manger centuries ago. For above me a flock of migrating Canada geese winged their "V" boldly across the sky to complete the story being enacted below that "unmerited suffering, willingly endured as the will of God, redeems," or as Aslan explains his death to the children in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, "When a willing victim who has done no wrong is killed in a traitors' stead, the stone table will crack and time itself will turn backwards." Resurrection follows sacrificial death!

So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven...the words of the Christmas carol continued in my thoughts as a winging victory disappeared into the morning mist above me. Soon our Christmas town's streets will be filled with the Norman Rockwellian longing for picture postcard living. But the Creator's voice whispers from our rivers just as advent approaches that the Christ child, born to die, comes that all the world might be redeemed.

Truly, in the pregnant stillness, as voiceless fish wait their time to spawn, much more than a new day and a multitude of tiny fry wait to be birthed. I felt God's finger gently pointing at me. And Gilfillan and I turned towards home. Soon the Jerusalem Cross Garden at the church will be buried by snow. But beneath it will lie the spring wheat, enduring it's burial, waiting for Spring and resurrection. How might God be waiting to use what I (we) am willing to sacrifice, or die to, to redeem the world?

"Crucidance" - Dying we Live

Visible only as fleeting splashes and liquid shadows in the crystal clear waters, Chinook salmon announce their arrival in our beautiful rivers without fanfare. The "crucidance" begins - living to die, dying to live - and these messengers from the deep in turn invite us to think on deeper things.

Some of these magnificent creatures will fall to hook and line as anglers like myself find satisfaction in sport and flesh. But survivors, paired up with their mates, will dig, lay, defend and die...to live again in the next generation.

Liturgically, kingdomtide is drawing to a close with the approach of advent. Good Friday and Easter are still far off in the annual rehearsal of the story of Jesus' birth, life, death and resurrection. Yet this kingdomtide-crucidance of life-giving death taking place in our rivers, reminds us that God's kingdom comes not through crown but cross, not on war horse but humble ass, not through power but in servanthood. It is good to splash the refreshing waters of such thoughts onto our often indifferent faces.

And I ponder a fish emulsion of the entrails of salmon caught this season with which to fertilize the herbs and vegetables in the Jerusalem Cross church garden? So will the "crucidance" of the salmon in the waters of the Wenatchee be poured out onto the soil of garden that a greening cross might turn us towards Him alone who is the perfecter of our faith. And in the holy gardening of our souls, 'the gates of God's kingdom" will "open in us" (Click to hear).