Today in the late afternoon after being indoors focusing on mentally draining tasks and absorbed in backburner melancholies of sorts, I just had to get outside for my daily dose of that which is good for my soul.
With so many outdoor tasks calling to me in the autumn as preparations for winter hasten, I found myself gravitating toward going into my small back pasture area to continue picking up black walnuts and shagbark hickories. I suppose my older son’s interests have rubbed off on me somewhat that I can now recognize these.
Whether the effort to clean and shell black walnuts is worth it or not I will soon find out first hand. And the little hickory nuts – this variety is supposed to be extra flavorful but hard to get to.
I know someone who brews hickory tea; I believe they simply smash them and let them simmer, shells and all, but I’d need to inquire. It was quite rich and flavorful on a cold winter’s day.
I’ve always loved to garden and grow things and this love has only increased in recent years. Enjoying the fruits of long-existing plantings here on this property (apples, mulberries, nut trees) is a blessing, and a lesson in itself.
There is a poem that I have found one line from exceptionally true:
God’s Garden
THE Lord God planted a garden
In the first white days of the world,
And He set there an angel warden
In a garment of light enfurled.
So near to the peace of Heaven,
That the hawk might nest with the wren,
For there in the cool of the even
God walked with the first of men
.And I dream that these garden-closes
With their shade and their sun-flecked sod
And their lilies and bowers of roses,
Were laid by the hand of God.
The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth, —
One is nearer God’s heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.
For He broke it for us in a garden
Under the olive-trees
Where the angel of strength was the warden
And the soul of the world found ease.
(Dorothy Frances Gurney)
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The variety of instructive lessons God has breathed into my soul while working in nature and cultivating environments is significant.
So significant that today my thoughts turned toward the idea that the most basic human need and desire to harvest and eat – whether wild foods or cultivated – is timeless.
When Jesus spoke in parables He often used farming, seed and other natural analogies and metaphors. And Paul continued in His writings to also draw upon such fundamental concepts.
A thing that is timeless is a thing that can be timelessly depended on to communicate the most distilled truths about life and spiritual matters. How interesting that the eternal truths would be seen in the timeless truths in creation. The idea is simple so complete.
I think of one of my favorite passages found in I Corinthians 15 concerning the hope of resurrection – Paul uses a seed analogy to explain things we cannot comprehend. If one is intimately acquainted with seeds, then the communication is pretty clear.
I remember once weeding a flower bed and noticing how I was so intimately acquainted with each seed I had sown and plants established that I could sort through green sproutings and pull away dead debris and weeds with ease.
And I also knew where there were seeds yet awaiting to spring forth, because I put them there.
The Gardener knows where and what was planted.
The observing non-gardener only sees what appears to be a mass of weeds.
The New Testament speaks of God revealing Himself in different ways at different times to humanity – through basic nature where all people can discern from creation itself that there is a Creator; to written forms of discerning God and relating to the Father of all Creation; to “sending His Son” to speak to us, in person.
That Jesus chose many communications from nature itself to communicate to us should get our attention and prompt us to experience and study nature, firsthand.
While there is value in understanding languages, structures, genres, contexts, history, author intent and so much more in trying to hear the message(s) of the Old and New Testaments, I think we could equally benefit from the same hands-on lessons found at the most basic level – nature.
Nature is accessible for all and its lessons of immense value and health of all sorts. Today, sadly, many people find themselves disconnected from that which is most basic.
The Father’s heart is life-giving, nurturing, tending and intentionally cultivating. The dependence that is most basic and needful for the human soul can only be realized in our Creator.
There is no quicker way to distill theology than to get back to the Garden.
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The view of the harvesting by machine this afternoon from the back area of my property.
“Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest,
Sun, moon and stars in their courses above
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love”
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