by Bill Dietrich

Recently someone who knows I enjoy gardening asked what I did during winter when there was "nothing to do in the garden." I found myself reacting impulsively with a "to do" list of garden tasks: pruning, raking, protecting tender plants, building retaining walls, tidying up the compost pile, and, foremost, repairing the fence to foil the deer who'd begun munching some newly planted azaleas. The list grew steadily in proportion to the energy I gave it. As my family knows all too well, I've had an obsession with things of the garden (witness a planned two-weekend pond construction project that consumed an entire summer a few years ago). It's such good and noble stuff. "One's nearer God's heart in a garden than anywhere else on earth," the old prayer goes. And anything that invites so much prayer can't possibly be wrong. My romanticized notions of gardening have seduced me time and again.

By grace alone I resisted the urge to plunge immediately into fence-fixing. I prayed a bit on my friend's question and began to touch a deeper invitation of this year's winter garden. After a heavy fall work schedule, I shouldn't have needed much coercion to set aside busyness for a while. Yet my impulse to busyness runs strong, a remnant perhaps of years as a CPA and then entrepreneur where self-starting seemed essential and nothing good happens unless you do it. Even after I began full-time work at Shalem, those same urges still emerge. It's such good and noble work, and there's so much that could be done.

What I soon realized is that what most needed pruning and cleaning was my own agenda. Instead of more busyness, however noble I might imagine it, what I sensed called to in this winter's garden is simply to appreciate, to gaze, to take the time to see what was there and what it could teach me.

Icons abound in the winter garden. It invites a time for looking deeply into the essential structure of things, a time for touching more deeply our naked desire for the only thing that can fulfill us. Most obviously, trees display their limbs like maps of their lives. We can trace their growth, their struggles, their woundedness, how their brokenness has been healed. Limbs dangle or fall to earth, some withered by lack of light, others broken perhaps by storm or some climbing child. All wait patiently for pruning by wind or snow or ice, as is nature's way. I remember that even in winter tree roots continue to grow deep and wide, feeding and storing energy for spring's eruptions of new growth. I imagine the Carmelites Brother Lawrence and Elizabeth of the Trinity smiling knowingly at this ongoing conversation between arboreal souls and the literal ground of their being. I wouldn't so much be surprised by what these souls were saying as be envious of how intimately they must know their God- "...ever more deeply rooted in thee" as the chant we often use at Shalem goes. I long to know such deep intimacy. I can trust that it's there, even when I'm captured in that busyness.

One icon that can almost be missed is the common snowdrop, the first flower to bloom in my garden. Galanthus nivalis grows at best 8 inches tall, emerging in clumps that slowly expand over time in woodsy soil. Its flower consists of three snowy white petals drooping downward at the end of a long thin stem amidst several strap-like leaves. The flower and stem look every bit like those candle snifters used in church--except when the weather turns warm and the petals flare outward to reveal its jewel-like real flower, a miniature version of the outer petals but intricately edged in green. Snowdrops are solitary souls. Like cloistered monks they stand alone in the winter garden and then retreat into the earth as other plants emerge in spring's advance.

This year a clump of snowdrops, nestled at the foot of a tall scrub pine, emerged in early December, a month or more earlier than normal, lured awake by the long, warm autumn. I imagined them encouraged also by several inches of new compost I'd heaped over the garden in October. That rich humus, the decayed stuff of last year's abundant growth, both feeds and protects new growth, the wonder of God's economy in the garden. I thought about how my own new growth emerges from all the stuff of my past, my gifts, my foibles, my missteps, my graced moments of awareness. The spontaneous heat of the compost pile calls to mind that deep transforming process that results from giving over all the stuff of life to God's mercy in prayer.

By Christmas the clump's leaves were well displayed above the black leaf mold, and slivers of white began to show from the tips of the stems. But when it turned bitter cold around New Year's I began to fear for them. Their fragile stems and leaves had drooped low in a frozen tangled mess, their green now taking on a blackish hue. I tried to untangle the plants but soon gave up as they flopped over despite my efforts. Finally I plucked one stem and brought it in the house to sit in warm water on a sunny window. At least I would enjoy this one, I thought, and wondered about the fate of the rest. But the plucked flower languished in the window, and the flower dried and shriveled rather than open. I mused that this must be some cruel divine joke, or perhaps more evidence of global warming confusing God's orderly plan.

Two weeks passed and milder weather came, coaxing me out into the garden again. There I beheld the clump of snowdrops, standing tall, blooming brightly against the rich black leaf mold, their flowers held proud above erect bright green leaves. They seemed to be looking sideways at me with knowing smiles, as if to say that my concerns for them were just that-my concerns and not theirs, and certainly not God's. The flower I picked was not ripe, its time not right. It was being cared for in ways I couldn't see and didn't trust. Had I left it alone, it would be there singing in the choir with the rest. My willfulness, by "doing," had gotten me again.

Snowdrops have shown me God's mercy, compassion, and faithfulness. They remind me to trust and live more fully into my own desire for God, to live fearlessly, to risk being who I am in God even when the elements seem against me. They know that Love is sustaining, protecting them. Can I know that too and resist the urge to usurp God's action for my own? I can but pray for continued grace to recognize my own romanticized notions of doing for what they are.

I look forward to spring's rebirth, but I'm now less impatient for it. Crocus and hellebores, daffodils and tulips will grace the landscape soon enough, blaring their Hosannas 'til we're deaf. But for now it's enough to just be in the winter garden, to see what's really there, and to let God show me, as Mary showed Martha, the one thing necessary to do.

Bill is Shalem's Executive Director.