"Planting Weekend"

Memorial Day Weekend, here in the Upper Midwest, is for many gardeners the official start of the planting season.  There is a (fairly) good chance that we won’t have an overnight freeze until the late Fall, and the balance of sun and rain should be healthy for life. Memorial Day Weekend, around the United States, is for many, but sadly a dwindling number, a weekend to remember lives which have been sacrificed for the freedoms which our nation enjoys.  In the lexicon of Paul, bodies which are ‘planted’ in the ground are but seeds which will grow into new bodies. (I Corinthians 15:42,ff.) So Memorial Day Weekend is a time to hope in things planted, seeds that will grow into beautiful flowers and that from the ‘hallowed ground’ will grow miraculous bodies. It is a weekend to exercise our capacities to remember, to hope, to commune. It is a time to exercise our faith that seeds planted in faith do not die in vain.

Faith (by Karen S. Bard)

“…all things are less than

they are,

all are more”   -Paul Celan

Consider the seed.

Consider the flower containing the seed.

Consider the stem, that shy messenger, carrying the secrets

of the underworld into the daylight.

Consider the root, fingering its way down, intimate

with the stones, the amazed dirt-

consider the seed, the stem

within the seed, the root

within the seed, the flower

within the seed.

Consider your left palm, warm, familiar, cupped

around a handful of seeds.

Consider your faith.