We met outside in the garden. Julia, who was then three years old, and I instantly hit it off as I chased her around the yard roaring like a lion. The huge orange tiger lilies suddenly meant the living memory of a woman I will never meet. Every time I smell lilies, tears well up in my eyes. From my three year old daughter, I learned that memory continues in the garden.
Love begins anew out of compost and dry bones.
And God always calls us back to the gardens of the soil and our souls. Going forth to dig deep and drink in the gift of God s sun and rain Accepting God s invitation to garden your soul is not an easy task. Gardening never is an easy job or one that can be finished neatly and put aside. As most good gardeners would tell you, at times when the weeds, insects, droughts and torrential rainstorms come, it is a discouraging job. Among the many, many things the green thumb knows is the consolation of the compost pile, where nature, ever obliging, redeems this season s deaths and disasters in the fresh promise of spring.