"I Just Love This Place"

“I just love this place,” said Dorothy, gazing at the garden courtyard between our church sanctuary and fellowship hall---a lovely garden in any season, but especially now, in mid-August.   

Knowing Dorothy, who has been with us a long time, her love probably extends beyond the courtyard to include the rest of the landscaping surrounding our church, to the sanctuary from which the garden is clearly visible in all seasons, and surely to us who, call this place “home”, even though we may know next to nothing about gardening!

We asked D. and others who month after month tend the grounds, clean the kitchen, pressure-wash, scrub, organize the storage rooms, fix the drains, paint, unclog pipes, run Cat5 cables, install energy-efficiency systems, replace toilet seats, de-moss the roof, bring tractors and garden tools and even a fire truck (water power there)... a lot of work, after all…

…why do you do it?...

We were hoping for some profound “spiritual statement!” Maybe we have a poet or at least a budding prose person in our congregation that we’d just never noticed?  Possibly…??

Nah... The answers ranged from “nothing else better to do with my day,” to “I don’t see a lot of money around to hire somebody”, to “I don’t have a lot of talents, but this is something I can do”… OK, but hardly poetry!! We think maybe folks are just shy, though, about getting a little too touchy-feely!

Oh sure, there’s the camaraderie, pride in personal skills, and occasional donuts, but we suspect gratitude is the one of the real reasons why we “tend the garden.” We’re grateful to be part of an open, welcoming community. We love the beauty and just plain comfortableness of this spiritual “home.”

These grounds—our “garden”—are a sacred place for us, humble as they are--- and as we are---no matter our lack of articulation!

We can be assured we’re on good footing here with our modest efforts because the “garden” as a metaphor appears frequently in the Bible, beginning with the Garden of Eden in Genesis.

We did a little searching on the Oremus Bible Browser site (http://www.devotions.net/bible/00bible.htm) and found so many really inspiring and beautiful instances. Without citing every reference (you can easily look them up for yourself), we found the garden as a metaphor for perfect harmony, for well-watered places and souls, for goodness and abundance—the opposite of “waste places.” Jesus used the metaphor of the garden in his parables, and at his last, prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane.

And in John 20:15, we read that Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene in a garden, where she mistook him for a gardener. And just occasionally we sing “her” hymn—old and sentimental, but judging from the number of YouTube hits, still loved: “I come to the garden alone...”

Marilynne Robinson, in her best-selling novel Home, has her character, Glory, say, as she remembers her father telling her years earlier: “God does not need our worship. We worship to enlarge our sense of the holy, so that we can feel and know the presence of the Lord, who is with us always.” *

As we worship in our sanctuary, with the modest but lovely courtyard and the surrounding landscape encircling the sanctuary (and us) in natural beauty, we’re grateful for the place itself, and for the “presence of the lord” made a little larger, sharper, and fresher by the Bible readings, prayers, hymns, thoughtful articulations from Pastor Marilyn, and the community of fellow worshippers.

Of course, we are all, every one of us, always at home in the presence of the Lord anywhere in all of creation, but we are human, after all, and a special physical space set aside just feels right. And, how could we be welcoming if we didn’t have a place to gather and invite folks into…?

And so, although it’s way far from the glories of, say, the Butchart Gardens, we maintain our “home place,” as best we can, with our rakes, clippers, paint brushes, help from Scouts, tractors, Janicki’s huge machines…with working water and efficient electrical systems, computers, fresh paint, clean kitchen, lovely plants, and we mustn’t forget the fire truck!

*Robinson, Marilynne. Home. 2008, p 110.

Marilyn is our consummate gardener

Rich pressure washes---sorry, spiders, about disturbing you, but...

Thank you, Janicki's, for the REALLY BIG STUFF

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Jan and his fire truck---don't ask! We're almost sure he did NOT steal it. And with Joyce there to supervise, all will be well. Jan uses its pressure to flush out the water pipes.

Dorothy, our gardening inspiration!

Don takes on the drains...it's going to rain again soon, for sure...

Dale is determined to find that water pipe. It's gotta be here somewhere!

Becky, our artist, just loves to paint---artistically or as a worker bee!

To the Boy Scouts...Thank you for the "back 40!"

The Boy Scouts…thank goodness they are tasked to do “community projects!” Local Scouts have met in our building for years. Some of our men are or have been Scout Leaders. These Scouts know our church supports their efforts with resources and occasional cash donations for camp, even as their incredibly dedicated local leaders may struggle with national policies, and all the other challenges that community leadership entails, especially when it involves children and youth.

When we asked the boys to help out with our “back 40,” aka “the jungle,”  they responded with gusto! Yes, we will help!

With the leadership of Scoutmaster Jeff Andersen and more than 20 Scouts, together with our own church’s Administrative Leader, Ty Clark, plus other of our trustees, members, and friends, the Scouts helped us with a huge “clean up party” with about 40 people pitching in.

Armed with wheelbarrows, rakes, shovels, saws, etc. they cleared the field behind and on the sides of our church property of debris, trash, and then helped us with lawn maintenance. They loaded at least 5 large industrial trailers with tree pieces, trash, stones, and on and on. Amazing!

Whew! We definitely could not have done it without your help, guys!

The day finished off with folks from the Habit for Humanity homes on our former property providing lots of hot dogs, chips, sodas, and other tasty specialties. In a way, it's sort of their "back 40", too, since they see it every day as they come and go. Thanks you all!

And we were proud when we heard that “our boys” won the top community service project for their quality unit award for this year, thanks in part to this project.

Way to go! Thank you!!!

And thanks, Ty Clark, for your unfailing energy and leadership on all the "big projects." We didn't get your smiling face in this photo, but we do appreciate the apparently HUGE load you are managing to pile on that trailer!