At gardening moments like this, I really identify with God our Creator, for the universe is God's, - all those planets, billions of galaxies containing billions of stars, dust, light, black holes, even time.... all creation comes from Him and belongs to Him. Yet, in the midst of all this diversity, faith tells us God takes a personal interest in everything He creates. On our own earth, He's interested in every continent, mountain, sea, lake, river, animal, fish, and insect, every plant, every bird on the wing. He made it, and it all belongs to Him in the dearest, most proprietarial way; all that comes from His hand is His dearest treasure. And so, all creation lives to praise God! Every flower carries God's imprint in its being, and sings God's Name with joy.
When we think of God the Gardener, we can begin to think of God in a whole new way, from a different perspective. In Fr. James Martin S.J.'s novel, "The Abbey," a middle-aged woman, Anne, finds gardening her greatest relaxation and comfort as she grieves for a son killed in an accident. One day as she gardens, she has a new, unfamiliar, and beautiful spiritual experience:
"Still kneeling, she (Anne) raised her head, at eye level with the taller blossoms. The orange and red zinnias she had planted last week had taken root. Now they were almost as high as the new pink snapdragons. And beneath them, the yellow and orange marigolds took up almost every inch of the garden. Suddenly Anne had an unfamiliar appreciation of beauty. The vivid color of the flowers in the bright May sunlight was like a scene from a postcard. Anne could hear the faint drone of a lawnmower, borne on the wind, but, other than that. there was only silence.
"Then she had a strange feeling - almost as if God was patting down the soil around her life. She felt comforted. Calm.
"She looked up, as if expecting someone to say something. But there was only the wind."
Days later, she tells a priest acquaintance, Fr. Paul, about her experience, and asks him if it sounds insane.
"Not at all," he tells her. "It sounds beautiful. God is the gardener who tends you like a flower, who nourishes you, just as you care for the plants in your own garden. That's lovely....Can you let that be your image of God for now?....That image may be a gift from God. It may be a way that God's inviting you to see things in a new light."
We can think of God the Father, the Creator, as a gardener. But Fr. Paul also remembers a place in Scripture when Jesus appears as a gardener. He says to Anne "You know, after Jesus rises from the dead on Easter and appears to Mary Magdalene, she thinks he's the gardener....It's strange that Mary can't recognize him after the Resurrection. After all, it wasn't like she had never seen him before. But maybe the way he looked after the Resurrection was a little ...different. In any event, she thinks he's the gardener until he says her name. Since then there's been a tradition in painting of portraying Jesus as a gardener. So you'll even see paintings of Jesus appearing to Mary with some gardening tools. It's really quite beautiful....
"And there are all sorts of wonderful ways of thinking about that. I mean, from a spiritual point of view. One of the old monks here (at the Abbey) likes to say that God plows up our soul and moves things around - as you do in a garden - so that new things can be planted there. You know how you pull up rocks and weeds to make new plantings in the Spring? God shakes things up a bit in our lives, and it's hard and painful sometimes, but all that earth moving can allow for something new to take root and bloom."
But not only God the Creator and Jesus can be visualized as gardeners. In the spiritual novel "The Shack," William Paul Young imagines a young man, Mackenzie, (also mourning the loss of a child), who meets the Holy Spirit as a young Asian woman who is a gardener. Together Mack and the Holy Spirit work in her garden, which, to Mack, appears very beautiful and wild and also disordered: "It was chaos in color. His eyes tried unsuccessfully to find some order in this blatant disregard for certainty. Dazzling sprays of flowers were blasted through patches of randomly planted vegetables and herbs, vegetation the likes of which Mack had never seen. It was confusing, stunning, and incredibly beautiful."
At the end of their time together, the Holy Spirit thanks him for all his hard work with her. Mack tells her
"I didn't do that much, really....I mean, look at this mess....But it really is beautiful, and full of you....Even though it seems like lots of work still needs to be done, I feel strangely at home and comfortable here."
The two look at each other and grin; and then the Holy Spirit tells him
"And, well you should, Mackenzie, because this garden is your soul. This mess is you! Together, you and I, we have been working with a purpose in your heart. And it is wild and beautiful and perfectly in process. To you, it seems like a mess, but I see a perfect pattern emerging and growing and alive...."
How comforting, enlightening, and exhilarating it is to think of our souls as gardens and our God as our Gardener! You know, creation wasn't just the work of God the Father/Mother; everything that exists was created through Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit blew like a mighty Wind, the Breath of Life. All of us belong in a radical, personal way to God, our Gardener.
Think of your soul as good, warm, rich, sun-kissed ground. God's gentle hands pat around your life, dig deep into your soil with such tender love, weed, move rocks of sin out of the way, plant such an incredible array of gifts, talents, relationships, experiences.... Sometimes God's work is painful (that weeding part!), sometimes serene. But the sun of His grace always rises; the rain of His grace softens your hardness and prevents spiritual dryness; the fertilizer of His grace gives you new energy and growth.
And, Jesus, the gardener, calls you by name, as he called Mary Magdalene. He knows every soul garden the way the true gardener knows the name of every flower and herb and tree. He will never mistake you for another, never plant anything in you in shade that should be in sun, or in sun that should be in shade. Even when Night falls, the great sadnesses that afflict all of us, we can feel His hands touching us with love in the dark, hear His voice talking to us, as any good gardener knows how to touch leaves with love, talk to plants, and stroke tree bark, even use medicines of mercy when plants are ill.
The Holy Spirit, the gardener, is the Fair Wind that moderates all temperatures, who blows wild seeds in to your ground to bloom and prosper, seeds that you would never have wanted or chosen. She is the One Who sees and delights in Her own interior plans and purposes for you, and recognizes your immense beauty when you think your soul is a disorderly mess. She is not afraid of gradual growth, of uneven progress, or even of mistakes, for She knows how to bring all our wild growth into good growth.
Finally, we can think of our dying as God our Gardener's way of gently transplanting us to a perfect place for our new growth and blooming. Perhaps we may wilt at first, from the strain, but we will put down roots in that new place, and recognize it finally, as our new and best home where we will discover how beautiful our blooming is, and how much we are and always have been loved by the One to Whom we belong, the One Who calls each of us tenderly, dearly, familiarly, by name.