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Written by Sherry
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Tuesday, 22 July 2008 07:42 |
Busy. Beside all the stuff we already had going, we got two interesting requests this week. One archdiocese wants us to help them make their parishes "missional" (very much an emergent Protestant term - this is the first that a diocese has adopted it as a goal that I'm aware of.) And another archdiocese in another country wants to incorporate Called & Gifted into their diaconate candidate discernment process.
Most of our "crisis" these days are prompted by the need to respond meaningful to the requests we are getting.
Whatever time and energy I have left goes into the garden. Finished mulching the yard and cleaning up the path after our large scale planting of bushes. So even though there is more to do, it looks increasingly garden-like.
4 large shrubs and 9 vines yet to be planted. Irrigation system to finish. Fence posts to erect somehow in hardpan that makes diamonds look soft. And the large project: planting another 400 sf bed - this time with wild grasses which is relatively easy. A truck full of topsoil sits on top of that bed at the moment. So the worst is over - for this summer.
My scarlet penstemons are just beginning to bloom and I had my first visit from a humming bird this morning as a result. The California poppies (pictured above) in their hundreds have been my glory and joy for weeks now.
Mark & Jan Shea sent me a lovely gift for my birthday: Inheriting Paradise: Meditations on Gardening by Vigen Guroian, an Armenian Orthodox theologian who teaches at Loyola College in Baltimore. The book is a series of four essays that Guroian wrote in the mid 90's for The Christian Century.
I'll share good bits as I read. But I must begin with this:
A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!
Rose plot,
Fringed pool,
Ferned grot -
The veriest school
of peace: and yet the fool
Contends that God is not -
Not God! In garden! When eve is cool?
Nay. But I have a sign.
'Tis very sure God walks in mine.
Thomas Edward Brown, "My Garden"
Brown was one of the great, brilliant, loveably eccentric English school masters - and a gardener.
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