Hi folks, hope you are doing ok! This week we are meeting at the Tavern and Galley, 71 The Links, Whitley Bay NE26 1UE. Meeting at 7.30 for those of you who are around. This week i’m thankful that John Cooper has provided this weeks blog for us.
Forgive me for a second allotment-based blog this week. I’m the type of person who tends to be thinking about what’s in front of me. And what’s in front of me, now, is weeds and roots.
Our original plan was to hire a rotavator and have-at-it to the roar of a petrol engine and possibly some not very H&S shenanigans. However, a neighbouring allotmenteer advise us not to do this as it’d just break up all the roots and make the matter worse. He predicted that it would be a spade-by-spade slow affair to “root out” every little (and in fact not so little roots) from the weeds. And so it’s been the painful task of digging one clump of earth and breaking it up with my hands to loosen the earth from the roots running throughout the ground. It’s a whole network of large and small tendrils.
At Easter last year I stepped down as a church minister to start something new – a fresh expression called Northern Shore around walking, being in nature and art. We’d already talked to the BFX leaders who offered to help and as we thought about what we wanted it to look like we use phrases from nature. One was “work with the weeds”. Don’t try and plant, tend the plants that are already there. It’s a high-minded idealistic metaphor for a faith community; but a terrible one for producing some veg. And, as I found out, there was a lot of digging and ground clearing needed to be done in my own life.
I gave myself two months to rest after leaving 35 years of deep involvement in traditional style of church, two months to untangle all I felt was right and wrong with it, the baggage of it all. None of this is to criticise that style of doing things. It obvious works for a lot of people, but for a long time I had begun to realise that it wasn’t working for me.
And so, over the last year I’ve had to engage in my own spiritual ground clearance. Some huge thorny brambles of issues got chopped down quickly and burned. Some of the old dead grass was easy to pull up or scythe. But closer to the ground, and under it, roots and fibres needed to be dealt with more carefully and slowly.
In the bible there’s a tradition of Sabbath and jubilee. Times when land is left to replenish, times when we rest, times when things are returned to what they should be. Rest – Restitution – Restored. Sometimes the pause between things allows us clear some of the things we need to so they don’t take root in the next thing. That’s what this year has been for me. In our frenetic world I wonder of many of us get the chance for a sabbatical as I have done. Maybe it’s more common in ministry; but we shouldn’t discredit its power in any walk of life.
I’ve also been reading some books on the Celtic pattern of the year. Between January and now is a dark time for reflection. Not bad, it’s about preparation waiting for the right time to sow, planning for the time just ahead when we can go into action. But for now, we wait, and we ponder; we dig and we pull up unwanted roots.
Questions:
What’s the most successful plant you’ve managed to grow?
Do you have green fingers, or can you kill a houseplant just by looking at it?
Have you ever had a time in life when you’ve been fallow (left to heal and feed and replenish), or sabbath, or sabbatical?
Can you remember any times where you have had to slowly and carefully process and weed out deep things lingering under the soil of your life?
How can you find a time each day, each week, each month, each year to have a period of intentional mental weeding?
Peace, Rob
I’ve been a member of BCFX for about 2 years. I love it. It’s home and hearth, welcome and challenge, ebb and flow.
