Stewardship

Post 8

I approach writing this post with trepidation. This blog was about looking at gardening from many viewpoints, including the spiritual. Intent on avoiding  the worn out baggage of sectarianism, I wanted to show the influence of my particular spiritual tradition (liberal Episcopalian Christianity,) through implicit, rather than explicit, values and themes.  However, the pastor at our church just asked me to write a prayer about cheerful stewardship...through garden imagery. How could I resist? And how can I resist posting it here, with suitable pictures. Spirituality is an important part of the garden and several spiritual tokens are half-hidden amidst the foliage. The pictures in this post show a few of the Christian ones. Therefore, if you are offended by liberal Trinitarian Christianity, or religion in general, please stop reading this post here. I have no desire to offend any of my siblings on this earth.  But if you are not offened, thank you and read on.

"Dearest God, who created us here on this gardenearth, while putting in our hearts a perpetual longing for the lost garden of shared delight, guide us to be good stewards of both our soul’s longing and this gardenearth. As a good gardener feeds the soil, and does it with delight, let us feed our souls and gardenearth, and do so with delight.  

Guide us to do this here, to honor where we worship, to contribute where we congregate and to nourish where our hearts are open to your love.

God, Friend and fellow Gardener, thank you for letting us share our delight in your gifts, with your delight in our imperfect, but heart-felt response, through the grace of your Son Jesus Christ, and the blessings of the Holy Spirit. Amen"

The truth is, whether we like it or not, or, at whatever level, believe in the story in Genesis or not, we are stewards of this earth, our island home. It's future, our future, depends on what sort of stewards we chose to be.