"God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it." Genesis 2:15

On Saturday it finally happened. The dirt was turned, the shovels were filled and the plants began to find their home in the ground. Lettuce, broccoli, tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, and strawberries. The growing season, though cooler than usual, has begun and there is no turning back now. Now there is only the weeding, the watering, the watching.

As I knelt on the ground, my hands feeling the coolness of the soil flowing through my fingers, I had this sense that planting a garden is so much more than digging. Planting a garden reminds us of where we started. Garden is both reality and metaphor and to engage in its creation and maintenance reconnects us with something very deep, a source of the Sacred we often ignore.

A favorite author,J. Philip Newell, puts it this way:"What is it we have forgotten about ourselves and one another? In the Celtic tradition, the Garden of Eden is not a place in space or time from which we are separated. It is the deepest dimension of our being from which we live in a type of exile. It is our place of origin or genesis in God. Eden is home, but we live far removed from it. And yet in the Genesis account, the Garden is not destroyed. Rather Adam and Eve become fugitives from the place of their deepest identity. It is a picture of humanity living in exile." Christ of the Celts: The Healing of Creation

There is something about gardening that reminds us of blessing of our own origin stories. Even if we have never planted a literal garden, this deep knowing that we are planted by the Creator who breathes us into being, runs someplace below the surface of who we are. The garden of Eden represents that place, the place of our birth, the place we wander from and return to, the place that can never be destroyed. As humans we seem to be always in some state of exile, fugitives searching and being found by the Holy.

I recognize that’s a lot to attach to a little patch of land in my backyard. But somehow it has meaning for me and makes sense. Come August, the broccoli -if it isn’t eaten by the rabbits- will be tasty. But its planting is so, so much more. It is good to be reminded of home.

"And then all that has divided us will merge……And then all will live in harmony with each other and the Earth……and then everywhere will be called Eden once again."  ~ Judy Chicago