About this time every winter, I get this insatiable urge to start dreaming about my garden.  The days are beginning to get longer again, and it feels like the restlessness of cabin fever, the frozen days that make my joints ache, and the bare branches and rock-hard soil are about to begin giving way to something new, something beautiful.  I long for the solace and simple joy that only the garden can bring in the spring and summer, when I can work my hands in the rich soil, smell the delightful odors of wetness and new-born greenery, and give praise to God for once again, miraculously, bringing life from death.

The story of our origins found in today's Genesis reading is an etiological tale used to explain the "planting" of the universe as the handiwork of God.  I picture an old woman, shaded by a floppy straw hat, kneeling over the flower beds and patting some soil gently around her bulbs.  While she works, she hums a gentle, blessed tune, loving the sun, loving the dirt, loving the seeds that will flower in due time.  Her "work" is pure delight!  She is like a new mother again, singing to the unborn child sewn mysteriously in her womb, loving that child much like the Creator giving breath and life to the "mucky-muck of the earth" (Ha-Dama - Adam).  Oh, what a mess she makes!  And what profound beauty will grow where she labors!

The gardener is a tremendous image for our God.  The simple majesty of God's design is unmistakable in our universe.  Children who experience it for the first time are filled with delight and wonder.  Then we "grow up," and often forget we are growing into death and life again.  Perhaps our "impurity" comes from missing the holy in the created universe, or in thinking that there is something or someone that God created outside of God's holiness.  Today's Gospel reading cautions us against this idea.

Every time we witness new life, we become aware again of that primordial scene of the holy Gardner.  It is no wonder that Jesus' last night was spent in communion with His Father in a garden, nor is it a surprise that Mary Magdalene encountered the Risen Lord and mistook Him for a gardener in John's Gospel.  Like the very first morning, God was sewing the seeds of surprise, the seeds of new life!

Today, this song is my prayer:

"Morning has broken, like the first morning!  Blackbird has spoken like the first bird.  Praise for the singing, praise for the morning, praise for them springing fresh from the earth!

"Sweet the rain's new fall, sunlit from heaven, like the first dew fall on the first grass.  Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden, sprung in completeness where His feet pass!

"Mine is the sunlight, mine is the morning, born of the one light Eden saw play.  Praise with elation!  Praise every morning!  God's recreation of the new day!