I want to try something new in this space today – a little bit of meditation – which is not always so easy to do in written form – but we will try together. I want you to start today by reading the words below, then I want you to close your eyes for at least seven deep breaths, or as long as you are able beyond that, and I want you to imagine Eden.

“Then God planted a garden in Eden, in the east. He put the man he had just made in it. God made all kinds of trees grow from the ground, trees beautiful to look at and good to eat. The Tree-of-Life was in the middle of the garden, also the Tree-of-the-Knowledge-of-Good-and-Evil. A river flows out of Eden to water the garden and from there divides into four rivers…God took the man and set him down in the Garden of Eden to work the ground and keep it in order.” – Genesis 8-10, 15, The Message

Welcome back. I hope that you just took a few minutes to read, and to breathe, imagining The Garden. I am going to guess that either you imagined a picture that you have been shown of Eden, what someone else imagined it to be, or if you have not seen those images something entirely unique to you. Our gardens, like ourselves, are not identical. There is not one right garden to imagine, we none of us, know that one perfect garden. The Garden is, like God, certainly only understandable from our own life experience and perspective.

I started thinking about The Garden a few days ago when I was in my mess of a garden, doing what I could to work the ground and imposing some kind of order, and honestly feeling a little overwhelmed by the situation I have created myself. That is, something that feels like a growing chaos.

I don’t mind pulling and disposing of weeds, those things that I am sure have a purpose but that I know only as something that will choke out the life of the other plants in the area. But if you are not clearly what I understand to be a weed I struggle to contain the growth, or even if you are not something I find particularly pleasing to my eye, if at one time you were intended for the garden, attractive, or even if you just seem to want to live, I can’t bring myself to remove that plant.

I go through seasons where I want to change what I might have in this or that spot, but if the thing presently in this or that spot is still more alive than not, I can’t just discard it; I move it, I adjust around it, or I just sigh and leave it alone. In the beginning there was a plan for the garden, with a precise layout, and specifically designated plants for each area. And then the succulents from a project my son did in middle school got moved into the plan because I could not throw them away, and the dog ate half of the original planting plan, and a willow branch sprouted to I stuck it in the earth, and well nasturtiums. So today we have abundance, and marginal borders, and trails where the dog runs through what was supposed to be sage.

When I close my eyes and imagine Eden I see a formal garden of neat borders and green lawns, perfect blooms, trees that always fruit evenly. Maybe the image of a perfect English or French country estate. Certainly not the wildness I have happening.

I came in one evening this week after harvesting a bowl of strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries, and was lamenting the mess of the yard and my inability to tear out plants and tidy up, when my husband said, “it’s messy and beautiful, and probably like how God feels about people.” And I realized he is exactly right. We are messy and beautiful and exactly how God made us; we are not asked to be perfect, or neat, or tidy, or to do things in just the right way. If we want to grow, God gives us the space to grow, when we get too heavy or burdened God is there to help prune back what we don’t need. There are weeds, those things that harm us, that we need to tend to and keep in check, and there are season where we are a little too much, and seasons where it looks like we might not make it at all. And we are all in this together.

I love a formal garden, I love the structure and the comfort of everything fitting in just where someone said it should be. But that is what people do, not how God works. Working the ground and keeping it in order might mean something different than exerting power and control, it might mean something more like nurturing and supporting. This is what I am wondering now as I close my eyes and try to see the abundant wildness that is probably more like Eden, than a place with straight lines and clear borders. A space where we touch each other, share what we need, support one another, and know that it is okay if it feels a little messy.

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