The Beauty of the Morning

Birds of many variety are singing outside my window. A red headed woodpecker is working hard on the black walnut tree. He seems a bit like the drummer of this bird band. The sky is the most beautiful blue without a single trace of a cloud anywhere. Shadows and sunshine dot the greening grass. For me, it would be impossible to doubt creation, there is so much order to what I see in the natural world, and so much that could never have been the result of just chance. Its cold this morning, when Emery read the thermometer this morning it showed we had a hard freeze last night, dipping into the upper 20's. Winter is not officially over yet.

The snow peas don't mind a bit and look fine peeking out from the rich brown soil in the garden, as do the radishes, lettuce and beats. In the rows of the garden, I feel the miracle of creation...I see it, and I am so filled with gratitude for it. Food for our table, nourishment for our bodies and our souls. Working the soil is meditation in action. A clearing away of stress and cobwebs.

There are times when we think about all the work we do each day, tending the garden, and the critters. Pruning trees and berry vines. Chopping wood, hanging clothes, cleaning barns and hauling water and wonder if we would be more happy travelling to exotic places, and then we remember what a marvelous sense of satisfaction we get from this work and how not once in the scriptures are there stories of vacations or fancy restaurants, but there are numerous stories of the reward of well tended land and the blessings of tending crops and flocks. So for us, it seems our life is a bit of a spiritual road. Not that its the only way by any means, but it is the way that works for us. Keeps us where we want to be, grounded in the simple things.

Today is our garden work day. As I sit here typing out these words, Emery is turning soil with his shovel, his heart strong and full of peace. Garden work was the first job man ever had, God appointed, so must be something very special about it.

For us, life is good.

"I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a rose of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green."

~Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mosses from and Old Manse