Blessing of the Animals 2009

Look Busy

My Spring Garden

Garden Wisdom

The poppies have gone by.  The iris are fading and the peonies are in full bloom.  The garden changes every day.

 I have a morning ritual in which I walk around the garden in my robe, with a cup of coffee, to say hello to the girls who are blooming and to say goodbye to those who are departing.    Imagine that four months ago snow covered these little darlings.  I anticipate each day as the snow recedes and the snow drop and crocus flowers appear. Now we are deep in the heart of garden season, anticipating summer.  Showers feed the bean seeds and new tomato plants encouraging the fruit which will delight us in August.  For gardeners, the anticipation is as good as the actual fulfillment of the sight, smell and taste of the garden fruits.

This week as I walked with garden shears, I pondered which peonies to leave to view from the window and which to cut to bring inside to enjoy.  The bouquet on the dining room table is overflowing and with fragrance that permeates each room of the house. I gaze at the flowers inside and out and I try to drink in all of their beauty as I appreciate that they will only be in full bloom for a short time.

My joy and my sadness commingle, because I know that the same is true for me and all those I love.  We come and we bloom and we fade.  As a Christian, I know that there is another life beyond this with Christ and with all the saints.  Perhaps it is the like the winter passing into a spring fully blazing with beautiful colorful flowers. Perhaps it is a place of joy and delight where in the presence of the risen Christ, the flowers and the friends never fade. 

Blessings, Karen

Sermon 4-19-2009

Sermon 4-12-2009

Sacred Mud

When my children were young, I would excuse myself and say I was going out to play in the mud.  Many years later, they realized that it had something to do with gardening but I maintain I like to garden because I love to get my hands in the earth.  I love the way it feels and often peel off my gloves just so I can be one with the dirt.  I love the way it smells and often put a handful to my nose to drink in the fragrance.  I have learned to look for the castings from earth worms and the foot prints of animals.  I love to rescue it from bad weeds and rejoice in the lovely plants (like poppies) multiplying in it.

Touching the dirt makes me feel literally grounded.  When I preside at funerals, i dislike the bottles of sand offered by the funeral directors and go looking for a handful of real earth to throw on the coffin at the time of saying "ashes to ashes and dust to dust." To me the ideal of dying and becoming one with the earth is comforting.  I feel I came from the earth, was made in God's image and that my body will return to the earth and live on in other life.  I believe that my spirit will live on with God.   I will pass on this poem by Robert Service about Mud.  And I'll be in the garden with my hands in the mud.

Blessings, Karen

Mud is beauty in the making,

Mud is melody awaking;

Laughter, leafy whisperings,

Butterflies with rainbow wings;

Baby babble, lover's sighs, Bobolink in lucent skies;

Ardours of heroic blood

All stem back to Matrix Mud.

Mud is mankind in the moulding,

hjeaven's mystery unfolding;

Miracles of mighty men,

Raphael's brush and Shakespear's pen;

Sculpture, music, all we owe

Motzart, Michael Angelo;

Wonder, worship, dreaming spire,

Issue out of prima mire.

In the raw, red womb of Time

Man evolved from cosmic slime;

And our thaumaturgic day

Had its source in ooze and clay...

But I ahve not power to see

Such stupendous alchemy:

And in star-bright lily bud

Lo! I worship Mother Mud.