The Hills are Alive with the Blooms of Springtime

We hear it sung each summer as Leavenworth's theme song. Now we will listen to it in church this Earth Day Sunday as our ritual of welcoming Spring and celebrating the work of our Creator. And you know it well!

The hills are alive with the sound of music
With songs they have sung, for a thousand years.
The hills are alive, with the sound of music
My heart wants to sing every song it hears.

I love to go to the hills each morning myself at this time because what I find is that the hills really are alive...alive with the color of springtime. Walking past the Ski Hill amphitheater I cannot help but sing along with an absent Maria as I witness the transformation of the forest from winter. But I change the words of the song to give expression to what I am seeing and feeling within.

The hills are alive in a blaze of glory
With blooms that unfurl, as they have before.
The hills are alive with the shades of springtime
My heart swells with joy as it beats with "more."

(Or something like that, with apologies to Rogers and Hammerstein).

The color begins with the yellow Avalanche Lilies and white Baby Faces. Soon they are joined by blue Oregon Anemones. And all around is the promise of the "more" yet to be given - the purple Lupin, the bright yellow Balsam Root and a rare bloom the color of the dark chocolate found in our Leavenworth chocolate stores.

In the meantime, as part of our play in this trinity-mapped world of ours, the Jerusalem Cross Garden has been seeded with the spring wheat. And the Lenten challenge, fulfilled in Easter promise, will be re-enacted by creation on the holy ground of church garden where, as seeds humbly die and "resurrect" in fertile soil to yield abundantly, souls are nurtured and fed.

The Blooming of Easter and Spring

Two trumpets, two trombones and a tuba helped mark the occasion in worship. Easter arrived with musical fanfare amongst us!

Now the cross, decorated with the bright yellow blooms of daffodils, stands outside in the Centennial Garden to proclaim the victory - "Christ is Risen," "Alleluia."

Ahead of us lies a welcome Easter season, fifty liturgical days, coinciding with spring, to creatively celebrate Gods' triumph - light over dark, life over death, warmth over cold. And the worlds Earth Day becomes for us an Easter Earth Day Sunday as we celebrate the Christ who plays in creation. Our town's Maifest becomes an Easter Blessing of Seeds Sunday as we prepare to engage life by planting our gardens. And Leavenworth Spring Birdfest becomes an Easter Birdfest Sunday as, having officially sponsored the Mourning Dove, we prepare for the moving of the Holy Spirit amongst us on Pentecost and Aldersgate Day.

This is the time for us Christians, as creation awakes around us in the bloom of spring, to witness to the Christ who plays in creation (Father), to open ourselves afresh to the Christ who played and plays in history (Son), and to embrace the Christ who plays in community (Holy Spirit) and promises to make all things new.

Story - Winter to Spring, Christmas towards Easter.

The photos of the JCGarden portray it all - a steady progression of earth's seasons, from Winter to Spring with the promise of Summer to come. And the science of creation's story reveals Gods' hand in ordering the cycle of life: from the dormancy of winter towards the promise of Spring and eventually back again. Rest, growth, fruit, harvest, rest!

This year's sanctuary Christmas tree, standing sentinel-like in the middle of the JCGarden as it changes with the seasons, helps link science with faith. The Jerusalem Cross Garden "orders" our daily lives in the ways of God - acts of devotion, acts of worship, acts of compassion and acts of justice; the Christmas tree helps cycle us through the Savior's story each year of advent, Christmas, epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost and Kingdomtide.

Yesterday the Christmas tree was removed as we prepared the JCGarden for planting. The tree had its' branches lopped of, preparing it for its' transformation into the Aldersgate Staff. Seeds will now be planted in the fertile soil of the Jerusalem Cross during this Spring season. There they will die and bring forth much, even as this Easter season of the Savior's story celebrates the truth that dying we too might live. And the Christmas tree, now transforming into the Aldersgate Staff, helping us to enact our faith story in its' metamorphosis, awaits to lead us into the rest of The Story - of entering the darknesses of the world where many are trapped in perpetual winter, to proclaim the Christmas truth (Advent/Christmas), "Behold, your Light has come," by living resurrection (Easter) lives pentecostally (Pentecost) empowered.

And best of all, soon the JCGarden will see the shoots of young plants break the surface of the soil...even as the green shoots of our faith, watered by the "Christian conversation" found through lectionary group participation, grow into the sunlight and warmth of God's love.

Aldersgate Staff

Looked at from any angle it's a poor excuse for a tree! But this is no ordinary dead Christmas tree standing in the middle of the Jerusalem Cross Garden. Soon it won't be a tree at all, but the Aldersgate Staff. And it will hang proudly on the CommonGround Gallery wall until Pentecost as a reminder that we are a people called into an active and empowered service. Where will it lead us this year as a congregation in service of God?

Already some exciting ideas are being shared. A visit to the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) Depot in Salt lake City to help assemble disaster relief packages is one of them. Starting a regular meal for those of our valley struggling to make ends meet during these difficult economic times is another.

One thing we should not do is rush our decision. Rather we should "wait on the Lord," seeking God's direction and each others council as we choose a project. On Pentecost Sunday perhaps we will be ready. As the post-Aldersgate John Wesley, empowered by the witness of the Holy Spirit, did mighty things for God and helped change peoples lives by establishing the Methodist movement, perhaps we too as seeds in God's soil can be instruments to "make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world."

Such is Jerusalem Cross gardening - "of soil and soul." Being reminded of the importance of the four acts of devotion, worship, compassion and justice. And the Aldersgate Staff, made from each year's sanctuary Christmas tree, can remind us annually that we are a pilgrim people who are called to "go," but who work best when the Holy Spirit is our guide.

Dying Alongside the Seeds We Plant

The Jerusalem Cross Garden has lain dormant all of winter. Nothing has been planted, nothing harvested. There has been nothing even to look at in a normally lush garden that has reverted to being a side yard of the church, frigidly white and singularly uninteresting. (How often that can be a reflection of the state of our souls).

That is until the sanctuary Christmas tree (picture left) was placed there after Christmas to, epiphany-style, announce to the world that the Light of the World, having been born, was now moving out to shine in the world.

But still, the garden was bleak and uninteresting.

All that is about to change in our little village. With the winter snows quickly receding - earlier than usual this year - my walks with a wide ranging Gill (my Brittany Spaniel) have taken me back to the forested trails of Ski Hill. The little yellow Avalanche Lilies, the first to bloom each year, are beginning to color the forest-litter of pine needles and mulch. And as I hike with Spring in my steps, the call of the returning songbird is joined in my mind by the signature song of our valley, soon to be sung each summer night during Summer Theater. We all know it well. And it speaks of Spring...of life returning to our mountains and valleys.

The hills are alive with the sound of music. With songs they have sung for thousand years. The hills fill my heart with the sound of music. My heart wants to sing every song it hears.

My heart wants to beat like the wings of a bird that rise from the lake to the trees.
My heart wants to sigh like a chime that flies, from a church on a breeze.
To laugh like the brook as it trips and falls over stones on its way.
To sing through the night like a Lark that is learning to play.

I go to the hills when my heart is lonely.
I know I will hear what I've heard before.
My heart will be blessed with the sound of music.
And I'll sing once more.

As a Spring rite, soon we'll have "Maria" celebrate this song in worship one Sunday. And her singing of it will be an invitation for us to engage again with the Christ who plays in creation - the forests, the mountains, the rivers, our gardens - and invites us to do likewise. We will prepare the Jerusalem Cross Garden beds. We will sow the Spring wheat, from which will come our communion bread come Harvest Sunday 2010. We will plant the seed starts to give our growing season an early beginning. And in doing so we will engage the Lenten truth, as Good Friday approaches, that a seed, to do any good at all, must give up its' life.

Perhaps our souls can be engaged yet again as we seek to be inspired by the Jerusalem Cross, calling us to die to self alongside the seeds we plant and regularly find ways to do acts of compassion and acts of justice, even as we do acts of devotion and worship.

"Behold, your light has come!", Now into the World

Growing things in the church Jerusalem Cross garden in the middle of winter, should be impossible. But miracles seem still to happen. For where there should be nothing but white snow, stands a very green, eight foot tree.

Looks can be deceiving however, for this tree is actually the cut Christmas tree - quite dead, though appearing very much alive - that decorated the sanctuary during the advent/Christmas season.

On the day of Epiphany, to the sounds of "We three kings of Orient are," a few of us gathered to remove the Christmas decorations from the sanctuary. Christmas was over, it was time to move on. So the banners came down. The wreaths followed suite. The ornaments which decorated the tree were safely packaged away. But what to do with the tree itself? As the focal point of the the season's truth, "Behold your light has come!", it just felt wrong to arbitrarily dispose of and summarily dismiss it from our lives. Truth is not conveniently just discarded!

So it was "planted" in the bleak landscape of the Jerusalem Cross Garden, in winter a forgotten place around the church. From its' branches will be hung birdseed "ornaments," offering food and nourishment to the birds of the area. The Light of the World, having come at Christmas, now moves out into the neighborhood in an act of compassion, helping to care for creation. And over the winter months the tree will proudly give life and purpose to the Jerusalem Cross Garden as it feeds the birds in a way that would make Saint Francis proud. In its' own symbolic way it will quietly challenge us members to do the same - to say to the world, "Behold, your Light has come!", and show just how this is true - a call to mission and service for the year?

Soon Spring will arrive. The Christmas tree will need to move again as we prepare the garden for vegetables and wheat. But what to do with this "friend" of both sanctuary and now garden too? We will have journeyed with it through the seasons of fall, winter and early spring, advent/Christmas, Epiphany and Lent. It heralded the Light as it bore the star at its' peak, then engaged the world as bird feeder. How might the Christmas tree each year, sanctified by it's presence for several weeks in the sanctuary as herald of God-in-the-flesh, continue to inspire and beckon us?

Proposal: cut the branches away and cure the stem; then carve it as a staff, that symbol of St. Christopher, used by Friar Tuck and many a pilgrim down through the centuries. Let the staff be "consecrated" by some major missional action undertaken by members to demonstrate Christ's light and love in the world during the year. Then to commemorate this Christmas of 2009/10 and the mission trip it encouraged us to take, let's use the staff as a dowel rod to hang one of our liturgical banners from as a continuing reminder for many years to come of how God has moved amongst the people called Methodist during the 2009/10 liturgical year.

It will take us twelve years to have enough dowel rods for each of our 12 liturgical banners. That should be enough time for the task of becoming a congregation of discipled Christians who together strive to "grow God's kingdom" for the purposes of "transforming the world."

Best of all, Jerusalem Cross gardening will have happened again, turning the sod of our souls, in spite of, or perhaps because of, a bleak, white winter's landscape.

A "Lantern Waste" in Leavenworth

The Jerusalem Cross Garden lies dormant and bleak now. Soon it will be covered by a cold blanket of snow leaving the harvest of spring, summer and fall a distant memory. But I am discovering something very exciting - that gardening continues this winter in the fertile souls of those meeting each week in the lectionary groups to study God's Word and be accountable for the Three Simple Rules (Do No Harm, Do Good, and Stay in Love with God), or the four acts (devotion and worship, compassion and justice) the Jerusalem Cross serves to remind us of .

In C. S. Lewis' tale, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lantern Waste is a place that connects the children to a world of purposeful adventure. The warm light of a lamppost shines on a land, Narnia, trapped in the gloom and cold of perpetual winter, and serves as a promise that this need not always be so. Because the lamp burns, there is hope for this land and all the people and creatures living in it. Spring will one day return!

On my morning walks with my bird dog, Gilfillan, I often take the river walk to Blackbird Island. The many lampposts I pass by cause me to reflect on how the weekly lectionary groups serve as a type of Lantern Waste...places where God's warm light shines, where participants wrestle with the meaning of that light and the purposes of God and our role in it. Just as the children arrive in Narnia at Lantern Waste to deliver a land facing the curse of perpetual winter, we are discovering that God calls us to be the light in our world as we allow the Spirit, through the discipline fostered by these small groups, to empower us for kingdom living.

We are discovering we cannot do that by ourselves, or even by only attending worship each week. But in the community of the small group, a place of meaningful friendships, we are kept from living distracted lives by being accountable for holy living - engaging in acts of devotion, worship, compassion and justice - and sharing how this is happening. Truly there is a winter gardening that is happening in this season of winter. Hearts are being pruned, our souls fertilized. And the season of advent, the time of preparation, is more real as we discover the joy of living lives touched by a person, Jesus Christ, and filled with his purpose.