Holy Thursday

I began this day, as always, with a time of meditation and prayer. After my morning prayer, I spent a few minutes listening to a video meditation by John Philip Newell from New Harmony. This series called “Journeying Toward Resurrection has been a vital part of my Holy Week observance. In yesterday’s mediation he says,

“Our sacred sites must not be cut off from the holy temple of the earth. Our sacred sites must not represent enclosed separation from the other peoples and the other creatures of the earth… We must find language, rituals, symbolism that keeps reminding us that the primary context of our sanctuary of our life is the earth evolving and unfolding from God.”

I, then, put on my gardening clothes and went outside to spread pine bark in my garden. Last night one of my yellow irises bloomed and several more are ready to "pop." I continued to work outside with pruning and pulling weeds. Michael came out as well, and spread fertilizer on all the trees and shrubs. After seven years, our gardens are beginning to need only maintenance work—a much better situation than the constant coaxing and pleading for survival of good plants and demise of weeds. We have made our own little Eden, and are now planning to put in a labyrinth in the back garden where we have a fire pit and gravel walkway.

As I worked today, I keep thinking back to Newell’s comments about the earth as sacred. Certainly my Native American ancestors felt that way. Certainly when I am working in my gardens I feel that way. How, then, do I bring that connection to every moment of my day? How do I find language, ritual and symbolism to sustain me especially when I am inside a climate controlled concrete box for the majority of my working hours? Tonight as I write this blog entry, I am listening to the rain pouring down outside. The water will aid the fertilizer to sink into the soil. It will encourage more growth and it will bring a freshness to the world that has been missing in the last several years of drought. I like the idea of the rain as bringing forth resurrection.

Here again are some words for John Philip:

“We are allowing ourselves to imagine what resurrection would look like in our lives and world. A risen Christianity rising to truly bless the earth will occur to the extent that we remember with humility that the wisdoms at the heart of all great religious traditions are given not to compete with each other but to complete each other.”

Tomorrow is Good Friday. It is the second day of the Sacred Triduum. I look forward to seeing the refreshed world into which the green blade springeth. And I look forward to seeing Jesus Christ in the world and in the faces of my sisters and brothers as we celebrate the rising that will truly bless us all.
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Listen to John Philip Newell's meditations on YouTube.com ("Journeying Toward Resurrection"). You can also find recordings by The Smoke Faires there. They sing an awesome version of "Now the Green Blade Springeth."