Sunday, March 24, 2013

Holidays and gardening

I knock on her door
every holiday

I want to tell her
about Jesus

I bring her our
traditional baked goods

St. Patrick's day 
is no different



Irish soda bread and
a cut out green shamrock

St. Patrick was neither
a saint, nor Catholic, I say

He was captured and enslaved
Escaping after 6 years

When he was 40,
God spoke in a dream

Ireland. Take my Gospel
to Ireland, the land of your
slavery

The first convert?
His former master.

God's Spirit enlightened
the whole nation.

Hundreds of small churches
sprung up like the shamrock
that grew there.

Believers pinned shamrocks
to their coats, showing their
allegiance to this Triune God:
Father, Son and Holy Spirit



How will I show my friend
these holidays are what
the ancients called "holy days"?

I want to pull her outside now
as I sit by my mailbox
with dirt in my hands

I've been yanking fist fulls
of dirt and weeds out
so this bed will be
beautiful again

Mindlessly, I yank,
one patch left and I
look at it. Stop.
Glance at my fist again

No. It's three-leafed clover?
Little shamrocks sprinkled everywhere?
Spreading endlessly through the grass

Father, Son and Holy Spirit here?
In my hand? Under my feet?
About to be tossed out as weeds?

Mind racing -

Willaim Blake
"To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower,
 hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour."

King David
"The heavens declare the glory of God...
day to day pours out speech,...
their voice goes through all the earth"... Psalm 19:1-4

even Jesus said that if we are silent in our praises,
"the very stones will cry out." Luke 19:40

All of creation cries out in His praises to God,
"the mountains and the hills...shall break forth
into singing and the trees of the field will clap their hands."
Isaiah 55:12

Gerard Manley Hopkins
God's Grandeur
The world is charged with the grandeur of God
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil...
And for all this [man's smearing of creation],
Nature is never spent;
Their lives the dearest freshness of
deep down things...

My friend is neither American nor "Christian",
I can't expect her to understand
our holidays and traditions

But I want her to know the why -
the background -
the history -

Peeling off layer and layer
of man-made traditions -

Is the pure seed

Luke tells us,
"The seed is the Word of God."
Luke 8:11

John,
"In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God"
John 1:1

Come here
Dwell among us Lord
I see your presence, O Triune God,
in the sky and in the grass.
We greet You
We praise You  

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