relationships and community on Gardens

For me the appropriate metaphor for the inner spiritual centre is a garden, a place of potential peace and tranquility. This garden is a place where the Spirit of God comes to make self-disclosure to ...

The Garden of Eden, literally the “garden of delight,” is humanity’s original and perpetually originating home, the place of our collective nourishment, inspiration, instruction, and hope.

One only needs to open the Bible at the beginning of Genesis and read a few pages to be left with the impression that place is important to the writer. The second creation account (Genesis 2) revolves...

In many parts of the country, leaf clean-up is an annual chore. They fall from the trees, blanket our lawns, and we often bag them up and toss them out (or burn them). There’s a lesson in this… In my...

For as the earth produces its bud, and as the garden causes the things that are sown in it to spring up, so the Lord will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations. May the L...

In his book Hope for Rwanda, Father Andre Sibomana notes how hard it was in the aftermath of genocide to bring Hutu and Tutsi together to talk about, even less agree on, the history of Rwanda. But the...

The advantage that cities and traditional neighborhoods have over sprawling suburbs with respect to interdependence is that they allow people of a greater variety of ages to participate meaningfully i...

May I a small house and large garden have; And a few friends, And many books, both true.

A gardener’s education begins with the realization that we are never exempt from the needs and requirements of care. It is formed through sustained attention to and responsibility for the places that ...

Recently, I was working in my yard when the blooms on my gardenia plant caught my eye. I took off my gloves, laid my clippers aside, and allowed my mind to linger on those flowers. Inhaling the intoxi...

The biblical narrative begins and ends at home. From the Garden of Eden to the New Jerusalem we are hardwired for place and for permanence, for rest and refuge, for presence and protection. We long fo...

I think when we go looking for fun what we are actually looking for is home. We are looking for peace. We are looking for simplicity, something to fill that spot that has been left by growing up or gr...

And time remembered is grief forgotten, And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, And in green underwood and cover Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

"The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely."

It is good to plant trees that you will never sit under…

The biblical narrative begins and ends at home. From the Garden of Eden to the New Jerusalem we are hardwired for place and for permanence, for rest and refuge, for presence and protection. We long fo...

Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

An empty-nester friend of mine was recently reflecting on the long days at home with a growing family. “You just gotta keep slinging chow,” she said with a laugh. I laughed too . . . but not quite as ...

Home shall men come To an older place than Eden And a taller town than Rome. To the end of the way of the wandering star; To the things that cannot be and that are, To the place where God was homeless...

"Love! The walks over soft grass, the smiles over candlelight, the arguments over everything else."

Let the vineyards be fruitful, Lord, and fill to the brim our cup of blessing. Gather a harvest from the seeds that were sown, that we may be fed with the bread of life. Gather the hopes and dreams of...

Joy is best sown in broken ground.

We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us.

The house built on the sand may oftentimes be built higher, have more fair parapets and battlements, windows and ornaments, than that which is built upon the rock; yet all gifts and privileges equal n...

We make our home by stories.

There is a paradigm shift going on in the realm of forestry. For years there had been a consensus among ecologists that all trees were independent operators, each tree an island unto itself, the fores...

Overall, from a biblical perspective, the sustained fertility and habitability of the earth, or more particularly of the land of Israel, is the best index of the health of the covenant relationship. W...

Think back over your life and try to remember a place where you felt safe and at peace, a time when you felt relaxed and okay. It could be an outdoor place—like on a beach or sitting in a tree. Maybe ...

In his excellent book, An Unhurried Life, Alan Fadling contrasts our overly busy lives with a vision of the kingdom from Isaiah chapter 61: Isaiah envisioned a kingdom in which those people in need ...

Shepherd of Israel, God of hosts, we have turned away from you, neglecting the welfare of your creation, ignoring the plight of your people, trampling on the creatures and the plants you have made, t...