Rocks, Piled High in Garden and Psyche

A Pile of Rocks in Garden and Psyche

They were the curse of my new project. Every thrust of the spade and pick axe brought the loud thud of yet another rock strike.

Quickly the task of building a fence and installing raised beds, that should have taken weeks, was stretching into months. The rocks, water-worn by an ancient flood and hidden in the soil for centuries, now piled up in both my garden and impatient psyche.

Rocks Waiting to be Placed

Until they didn't!

In life's rhythm of disorder, order, to reorder (Covid-19 disorder, stay-at-home order, healing of body and soul reordering), the disorderly rock piles, with an ordered placement, now yield a re-ordered threshold into my potager garden. Paved to handle increased foot traffic this new path, as bonus, now displays the ancient story of those tectonic and watery forces that shaped this beautiful land.

A New Path Emerges...

Again, for me there is now no going back. The COVID-19 pandemic spurs me to a determination to be a more faithful Christ-follower: my theology graduates from kindergarten; my preaching freed from a transactional understanding of the cross ("Jesus paid it all") to a relational one of Christ in Jesus demonstrating pure Love, to which all are called.

A new path for me - forged by the ordering of disorderly rocks in my garden, and the ordering influence of this stay-at-home directive - is being laid on which I now must walk. St. Francis says it so well from his deathbed. "I have done what was mine to do, may Christ now teach you what you are to do."

This feels so right. Perhaps my second half of life will be richer for it.

Written this Holy Saturday, April 11, 2020.