Luann Adams

“It’s too early in the season to do much but look things over, to walk around and survey the winter’s damage and the hopeful signs of Spring.

The ground is soggy.  Old leaves pack in among the bushes looking barren now without their leaves.  How like this are the seasonal moods of the soul — now muddy, now bright, now soggy, needing the warming light of God’s presence!  All we can do is notice, gaze, and see the bare truth of our situation.

I stand in my inner garden and in the actual garden.  There is so much work to do, but I know the time for action is not yet.  My arms hang by my sides.  The tools are in the basket.  I try hard to believe the old saying, “They also serve who only stand and wait.”

The air feels metallic.  It’s time to go inside again, into more waiting.”

“With or without your hard work God is always moving in your life.  Wait on the Holy.  Wait and receive the gifts that come.”

From A Mystic Garden by Gunilla Norris

“It’s too early for anything to be done in the garden.  the sun pours down — a promise of the warming to come.  In a day or two, however, the temperature will drop below freezing again.  Now is a time of waiting.

What do we do when we wait?  Plan?  Fidget?  Fret?  Dream?  Rest?  Pace?  Why is it so hard to do nothing?  The simplest, easiest thing is to let things be.  Why not just “be” in the sun this little moment.  Perhaps when we do nothing we see how naked we feel without plans?  Perhaps we feel useless without our goals?”    (From: “A Mystic Garden” by Gunilla Norris)

Of all the spiritual disciplines, solitude and silence is often the most difficult — and can be the most fruitful.  For learning more about the depth and beauty of “being”, check out Ruth Haley Barton’s powerful little book:  “Invitation to Solitude and Silence”.

by Annie Dillard

The creator goes off on one wild, specific tangent after another, or millions simultaneously, with an exuberance that would seem to be unwarranted, and with an abandoned energy sprung from an unfathomable font. [...]

by Robert Frost

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay

by Gunilla Norris

The plants in the garden are giving their all. Stems and leaves surrender their energy to fruiting. The days are shorter, the air cooler. Autumn is a ripeness, an urgency to complete, to go to fruit and seed, to give to the future.

Our lives, too, must be allowed to mature, to be able to give to others. We do not bear fruit for ourselves. We bear fruit for [Creator God].