We started the process of uncovering our garden yesterday. Under the rotting leaves, dead plants and general debris, newness abounds. Flowers I had forgotten planting have been hidden under the dark, wet, mulch, feasting on the underbelly of autumn’s free-fall. Now, tiny unformed leaves and stems are reaching out and toward the sun.

It started me thinking about the times in my life when I felt buried under lots of dead stuff…old ideas, my own need to control, complacency, stubbornness, apathy.  The list could go on. But then something happens-grace?- and the mess gets moved aside and there lies growth. It is easy to think that it was just a matter of moving the "dead stuff". But the reality is that the compost that covered what needed to grow also provided the nourishment and protection for growing what was to come. In that place where the newness was being born, the old stuff held on with patience, feeding and taking up the space until courage and passion could burst forth.

Are you covered up with old, dead stuff right now? Is there something that is waiting to spring up and grow in your life?  Like a garden, we most often need to practice the gifts of patience, waiting, reflection, prayer,observation, and finally courage. Courage to believe that the time for darkness is behind and the time to reach out toward the sun and grow is now.

Wherever you are on this path of "uncovering", blessings to you……

"Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin;yet, I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory is not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will the Holy One clothe you."   Luke 12:27