ON GARDENING

ON GARDENING

Last Sunday’s readings, and today’s, include parables about farming or gardening. The images would have been familiar to the people hearing them, and still will be for many of us. I know exactly what Jesus meant about being careful in dealing with weeds so that I don’t take the leek seedlings or the beetroot or whatever out along with them.  What made things more complicated for the landowner in today’s gospel  – or more precisely his workers – is that darnel looks very much like wheat and apparently the difference is only evident when the plants are almost fully grown.

So the landowner and the workers had to be patient and wait for the situation to clarify itself.

You have to be patient if you are gardening or planting and you have to take the seasons as they come. In most cases we can’t speed up the growth of the tomatoes or the roses; all we can do is plant them at the right time, prune them when needed, and wait (and keep the weeds out).  Gardners and farmers also know that they can’t do much about the weather.  I was a bit annoyed when a cool spring and early summer meant I didn’t get many pumpkins, and a wet autumn did the celery no good. For those whose livelihood depends on the land and the weather, the consequences of a bad season can be much more serious. We know that climate change is leading to precisely such damage.

In telling stories about farming, Jesus would also have been familiar with those psalms which refer to the goodness of God’s creation. Psalm 104 reminds us that God ‘make[s] the grass grow for the cattle/ and plants to serve human needs,/that they may bring forth bread from the earth/and wine to cheer the heart’.  Psalm 65: ‘The hills are girded with joy, /The meadows clothed with flocks/ The valleys are decked with wheat/ They shout for joy, yes they sing’.

And yet, as Pope Francis reminded us in his Laudato Si’, we have not always been as careful of God’s creation as we need to be.  He asked all believers to remember to give thanks to God before and after meals. ‘That moment of blessing, however brief, reminds us of our dependence on God for life; it strengthens our feeling of gratitude for the gifts of creation; it acknowledges those who by their labours provide us with these goods; and it reaffirms our solidarity with those in greatest need’.

Jim McAloon