A Ramble About Gardening

We've finally gotten our gardens in over the last couple of months. The house we're living on is situated in the middle of what has consistently been fertile, well producing farmland; some of the best in this area. Every year it still produces fields of good crops of wheat or peas for the farmers that rent this land from my in-laws. It's so fertile that, in a good year for rain, you literally just have to throw the seed over it and it grows with little more done to encourage it.

It's funny how I'd forgotten that I actually enjoy farming or gardening. I took horticulture and agriculture classes in High School, and they were some of the few classes that I actually looked forward to when I was in school. I enjoyed the feel and smell of the soil, especially when it was just watered. I don't remember being very good at it, a lot of that had to do with me being a teenager at the time, but I do remember looking forward to that part of the day.

There are several things that are coming back to me though as I'm doing this with my wife. The first is that it's hard work. There's really no way around it being hard work. There are ways to make it less hard, but not by much. My back has now put me on its “do-not-call” list. It doesn't want to know that I need to get back out there and use the hoe, and when it learns about it my back protests loudly.

The second is that you have to be careful with how much of anything that you give it. There's a danger in both giving it too little water and too much. There's a danger in both giving it too little fertilizer and too much. Too little water and the plant dies from being too dry. It just shrivels up. Too much and it dies from drowning in it. That happened with our first batch of tomato plants and the deluge of rain we got this past spring. Too little fertilizer, and the plant may not have the nutrients it needs to grow right and produce fruit. Too much and it'll burn the plant's roots and kill it completely. Too little sun, it can't produce chlorophyll, too much sun and it'll dry out the soil too fast. It's got to be moderate amounts of each. Not too much, and not too little.

The third is that you have to pull up weeds when they're small. You'd think this would be a no-brainer, but the truth is that when weeds are small, they don't look like much of a threat. But if you leave them alone, they grow faster than you think and put down deep roots quickly. Then when they are an obvious threat, they are much more labor intensive to remove, and some are nearly impossible without damaging the plants you want to keep.

The seed and soil have to be good too. If there's something wrong with the seed, it may not grow at all no matter what you do to encourage it. Not every kind of seed grows the same way either. You have to be patient with pepper seed, and they have to be planted under certain conditions with the right temperatures. Whereas with beans, every second grader knows you can plant them in a paper towel and ziploc bag and they'll grow just fine. If the soil's got too much clay, there won't be enough drainage. If it's got too little, there'll be too much. It seems like seed grows really well in the decaying remains of other plants, whereas chemical fertilizers may do nothing at all or hurt it. Some seed will grow just fine on the surface of the soil, other seed needs to be planted a little deeper before it germinates.

It's no secret that Jesus and St. Paul often used farming and gardening as a metaphor for spiritual growth. One of the best known parables is the “parable of the sower.” A sower is a person that goes out and spreads seed over a tilled field by throwing it out and letting it land where it will.

Jesus explained that the seed was His message, and the different kinds of ground where the seed fell were the different kinds of people who received the message. I think that the metaphor can be taken to include some of the lessons learned from literal gardening.

First, spiritual growth is work. It is hard work, and don't let anyone con you into thinking otherwise. It requires constant weeding, watering, feeding, and guarding your crop so that various wild animals don't come in and steal or damage the fruit. I can't stress enough that you can't let down your guard for even a moment.

Second, you have to be moderate in everything. Too much of anything physically or spiritually will damage your spiritual growth. Too much food, sex, or sleep no matter how innocuous it may seem will get you hooked on those sensual desires and fling open the doors for other more dangerous demons (literal or figurative, take your pick) to rampage in and destroy you. Too little and your body begins to starve, become delirious, and becomes far more easily tempted to over indulge. You must allow the right moderations of each, as much as Grace allows, and no more. The same is true of spiritual things. Too much prayer, scripture, or even sacrament too soon and it can be damaging because it can lead to self-esteem, and then the far more deadly error of pride. Too little prayer, scripture, or sacrament and you won't have enough of the nutrients you need to grow spiritually. You must learn, whether it is physically or spiritually, to take only what you need to grow and be sustained for the day. Neither more, nor less, because any suggestion to take more or less is not from God, but from your own demons and desires which want to get as far from God as possible.

Third, you have to stop desires when they're small, even if they don't look like any kind of a threat. Notice, I didn't say “sinful” desires. The three desires, or demons, which open the gateway for all the others are unchastity (or a lack of self-control), avarice (otherwise known as greed), and self-esteem. Unchastity for our purposes means being immoderate with anything your physical body needs. This is hard because it could be something as simple as, “well, it's just one more candy bar.” Or it could be, “let me sleep in just another fifteen minutes,” or “well, just one look won't hurt” (you know what I'm talking about). The body needs food. Too little, and it dies too soon; too much and it grows obese and dies too soon. The body has a sex drive (yes this differs from person to person). Too little and a person suffers psychologically and emotionally, too much and they become a slave to it. The body needs sleep. Too little and you start seeing funny pink elephants with white polka-dots, too much and it starts being unable to function. Avarice can seem to be as innocuous as “oh, that would look great on me!” Or, “if I only made another fifty cents an hour,” or “if I made more money I would be able to help more people,” this last one is quite dangerous because it opens the door to the desire to have more through the excuse of wanting to help others, and then shifts the focus to just having more and little by little forgetting about others. Self-esteem is insidious and dangerous and can work either positively or negatively. It starts by, “well, I'm a pretty good person,” or “well, at least I'm not like that person.” Inversely it can be “I can't believe I did that, I'm such a horrible person.” It's the desire to be, or not be as the case may be. If you don't recognize and stop these things when they are small, they will grow quickly and spiral out of control. Then, finding them and uprooting them becomes a much harder, more painful, and intensively laborious task which may prove to be impossible without help.

Finally, the message has to be the right one. If you haven't been planted with Jesus Christ Himself, with the gospel and message He taught, with the life and path He walked; don't be surprised if the crop you get is deformed, doesn't produce fruit, or doesn't grow at all. If your life doesn't start to look life Jesus or His Apostles, check your seed, check the soil that it's planted in, and then check for weeds which could be choking your growth.

There are some who garden just for a hobby. It's something to do just to entertain themselves and keep busy. There are others who garden because they need to eat and feed themselves. There are some who profess faith and are baptized just because it's “the thing to do”. There are others because they truly want union with God. What is your goal with your faith and practice? Is it just some kind of a hobby? Or are you serious about the final goal of union with God? Are you serious about producing fruit in your garden, or is it just there for fun and left to overgrow when it gets boring? St. Paul, in Philippians 3 gave his answer. He wrote that he had suffered the loss of everything in order that he might obtain Christ, and that he counted everything else as trash. Jesus compared it to a treasure buried in a field which a man sold everything he had just to buy the field it was in. How important is your garden to you? How important to you is it that it produces fruit?