Watching the Garden Grow . . . and Imagining the Possibilities

A sermon by Rev. Roberta Finkelstein

South Church , Portsmouth , NH

Sunday May 7, 2006

A garden, said the Rev. Laurie Bushbaum, is nature’s classroom, a place to encourage a child’s imagination (or a grown-up’s), to instill a love of plants and all nature, to learn the value of work and its rewards. Even a failed crop, she says, can be the perfect opportunity to explain the life cycle through which all living things travel. One of the children in her church gave this definition of God: “God is what knows how to grow.”

If the divine is what knows how to grow, then a garden is the place to go to be religious. Is gardening really the best metaphor that I could have chosen for this sermon this morning? I hope so. There’s a lot riding on this sermon! The gardening metaphor came to me as I recalled something my mother told me long ago about the art of gardening – a truth every gardener knows. “You have to live with a garden for an entire year before you can really become the gardener,” she said. That is the only way to know the full potential of the garden; to learn the secrets that are yielded up each in their own time. If you don’t wait the full year, you may miss the most glorious offering of a particular plot. You may plow under or spade through a treasure, over-plant and strangle something delicate that is struggling to establish itself. 

            Now this year of watching the garden grow is not passive or lazy. It’s not like ‘watching the grass grow” though I do recommend that from time to time. It is an active, appreciative approach to gardening. As you watch your new garden grow, you are always ready to offer support in the way of water, food, mulch, weeding, and staking. This watching is to make sure that you fully understand what you have in your garden before you make any major additions or deletions. If the garden is nature’s classroom, then it’s contents are far to precious to take for granted, ignore, or misunderstand.

            My mother was a far more dedicated gardener than I am. She looked at every patch of dirt as potential, and more often than not she succeeded in turning pockets of neglect into spaces of stunning beauty. Her approach was both simple and firm. Either grow or get out of the way! She used to talk to her houseplants as she watered them. She’d say, “Now, this is it for the week. Anybody who needs to be watered more than once a week doesn’t cut it in this house.” And they all grew. My mother must have known May Sarton’s mother, she too knew and taught the truth that "we must be hard to move among the tender with an open hand, and to stay sensitive up to the end, to pay with some toughness for a gentle world.”

I haven’t been able to develop quite that level of firmness with my plants; I sometimes break down and give the weak ones a mid-week drink. But I have learned, from my mother and many other teachers, how to create an environment in which living  things flourish. My mother would have agreed with the child who said that God is what knows how to grow. With a little assist, anyway. She taught me that the job of the gardener is to issue an invitation to grow and to flourish. She was a tough love gardener, but the living things that came in contact with her all were blessed with the impression that there was something good and beautiful inside of them that was being invited out towards the light.

            In order to successfully issue this invitation, you have to trust the basic impulse of all living things to grow towards the light – and I mean that in all the ways you can imagine. Then you have to make sure they have an adequate opportunity. You need patience; every plant grows toward the light in its own time. You need a deep and abiding faith in the basic nature of things. And you have to be willing to be disappointed, surprised, and absolutely delighted.

Now I’m quite sure that this was the right metaphor for this sermon, because I have just given you a perfect job description for ministry! And my mother, long ago and before the possibility of ministry had ever entered my mind, gave me the perfect job description for a minister in their first year in a new settlement. Watch the garden grow. Don’t make any major changes until you have sat still, watched, listened, admired, and taken full measure of the potential of the garden; learned the secrets that are yielded up each in their own time, experienced the most glorious and unexpected offerings, learned the struggle of the delicate things struggling to assert themselves.

            If you chose to invite me to be your settled minister, and I hope you do, please know that I have already started watching the garden grow. Throughout this week I have tried to listen as much as I talk, to ask as many questions as I answer, to watch for the sub-texts, the unspoken clues to the true depth of this community. I want to share with you some of what I have learned. At dinner with the Board, I caught a glimpse of an emerging vision for the governance of South Church based on the concept of Shared Ministry.  Your leadership is committed to creating structures that will establish a collegial and mutually supportive relationship between professional staff, elected leaders, and volunteers. This structure will free all of us to be the best that we can be at our chosen ministries.

            At a series of lovely and lively meetings with the practitioners of shared ministry, I got a sense of the depth of commitment and passion that many of you bring to the work of worship associates, pastoral associates, outreach associates, and covenant group leaders. I heard stories of great compassion and spiritual deepening. I heard talk of a determination to make South Church into a flagship church that balances inward direction and care with an outward looking determination to witness for justice. And I learned, from the people who plan and implement the Covenant Groups, that small group ministry is still the magic bullet my friends. If you participate, you will find all the depth and complexity that you need for your spiritual life – fellowship, a sense of belonging, a challenge to go deeper.

            In conversations with those of you involved in Religious Education I heard a sense of pride at the quality of the program you have created and sustained for children and youth. I also heard a desire for that kind of depth and quality in opportunities for adult growth and learning. And I heard a yearning for everybody at South Church to embrace the reality that we are, together, the village that it takes to raise the children. That family events are not just for parents and kids, but for everybody. Just as we have expanded the definition of family in radical and inclusive ways over the years, perhaps we need to expand our self-understanding as an extended family in service of our shared faith.

            I had many conversations over the course of the week about the diversity of the membership of South Church . Age, theological orientation, philosophy. You are a large and varied group of people. Sometimes I thought I heard some whispers of fear. One fear is that what is most precious to each small group might not  matter enough to the large group. We talked about ways to acknowledge all those unique approaches to Unitarian Universalism, ways to celebrate together the particularities that make South Church such a special place. Another fear seems to be that there may not be a strong enough core – a gravitational pull that insures that all of you will continue to come back to the center. I have a lot of faith in Unitarian Universalist congregations to assert and reassert their central vision and identity in such a way that they thrive, not in spite of, but because of the various particularities.

And there, was of course, some conversation about money. I am aware of the fiscal challenges you have faced, and of the ways you have come together to meet them. I am also aware of how much you would like for money not to be the primary focus of your communal life. I believe that you have taken some fine steps in that direction. Your newly named Stewardship Committee represents more than just a change in name. Stewardship is a way to integrate generosity, financial planning, and responsible fiscal processes into the theology and culture of the church. I look forward to being part of that integration.

            So that has been my week. To take the gardening metaphor one more step, in my hours of ‘down time’ Barry and I have been house hunting. One little thing I always take note of is the plantings that have obviously been thrown in, usually around the front door of the house, just so that the places ‘show’ better. I suspect that most of those bushes and flowers will not survive long term. The plantings are too shallow, they will not be allowed to develop the kind of deep roots that insure survival. That is the risk of house-hunting, and minister hunting too. None of us can know how it will really be once we begin to work together day in and day out. There is a certain leap of faith involved in this process, even after this comprehensive week of candidating.

            A note about this week. On the Myers Briggs scale I am an introvert. Being an introvert doesn’t mean that I don’t like people, or that I don’t like being with people. It doesn’t prevent me from getting up into the pulpit and preaching; in fact I love public speaking. It doesn’t prevent me from standing in a room full of people doing a spontaneous questions and answers for an hour. But it does mean that after a long day of interaction, I need to recharge in solitude. In a normal work week, I try to anticipate and manage that need to go back and forth, in and out. This was not a normal week! Some of you have no doubt caught me at times when I was dragging. I may have seemed distant or detached. This too is part of who I am. I am a person who needs solitude to recharge. All I can do is apologize to those who felt less warmth from me than others. And I can promise you that over the long run you will all have the opportunity to interact with me when I am at my best rather than when I am worn out. Real ministry happens over the long haul, and if we enter into this adventure together, we will do real ministry together.

Spring is the season of the garden, the time when even the least faithful gardeners among us look at our yards and see the potential beauty awaiting our efforts. The spring demands that we get our hands a little bit dirty, get close enough to the garden to smell the wet earth, or, at the very least, stop and admire the handiwork of the true gardeners among us. It is springtime, not only in your gardens, but in South Church . As you make your decision about ministry, you too are imagining the potential. But to bring that potential to fruition, you’re all going to have to get your hands dirty.

May we all learn the lessons that the garden will teach us: that with a little bit of intentionality, regularity, and depth, and with a great deal of patience, we too can be ‘what it is that knows how to grow.’ It is my fond hope that we will, over the next year, be engaged in a mutual process of watching our garden grow and imagining the possibilities together.

Benediction

A vital and healthy congregation is what knows how to grow. May we all grow towards the light, in our own time and in our own ways.

Amen.