Prostitutes, Gardening, and Other Thoughts on God

As a child, I can remember my mother using a certain euphemism that I could never quite decode.  You may be familiar with it.  Mom referred to prostitution as "the oldest profession."  It wasn't until I was a teenager that I finally understood what she was talking about.  Next time, however, when I hear her use that expression, my smarty-pants reply will be, "WHAT?!  She's a GARDENER?!?!  How scandalous!!"  That's because if you pick up the Bible, and start reading at verse 1 chapter 1 of Genesis, and you start chugging along, you'll very soon find the answer to the question: What is the oldest profession?  It comes in Genensis 2:15,

"The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till and keep it," (NRSV).

Humans first job was to till the earth!  God made humans to be gardeners, but ever since we were driven East of Eden, more and more of us have lost our affinity with plants, the Earth, or practicing the real "oldest profession."  My husband Rob and I like to joke that we both have "black thumbs," but it's actually no joke at all.  The Humbles manage to kill just about every living thing we plant.  We are, however, able to keep much higher maintenance things like frou-frou dogs and small children alive, just not plants.  

Recently we went to North Haven Gardens to purchase 2 rosemary bushes because we were told that they were virtually no-maintenance, immortal plants in Texas.  "You can't kill these!" the cheerful lady who checked us out assured us.  A month later we returned sheepishly with the two brown bushes in trash bags to ask the staff where we went wrong.  They were aghast.  

Our second attempt at gardening involved another supposedly "indestructible" plant: asiatic jasmine.  (My mother curls her nose up at even the mention of asiatic jasmine because she says it spreads like wildfire and you can never get rid of it.  Sounds like our kinda plant then!)  We needed to fill a large bed in our front yard, so we bought a whole flat of it, and then Rob dug little holes and planted them in the ground a few inches apart just like the little flags said.

A month later, though we had been dutifully watering them daily, our jasmine wasn't "spreading like wildfire."  In fact, they looked pretty much the same as the day we planted them.  I couldn't figure out why.  So I got down on the ground to investigate.  I soon realized that our soil, though regularly watered, was so dense it was like rocks.  We hadn't thought to till the soil before we planted... duh!  The soil around the plants was packed so tightly that it was as if our jasmine plants were still inside little pots.  And the topsoil, when dried, felt like concrete, so the water wasn't able to permeate through to the roots!  

The only thing to do, then, was to go back with a little hand rake, and carefully till all around each plant without ripping its roots or digging it up.  The work was so tedious and it took much more time and effort than if I would have if I had just tilled it in the first place.  But as I was working, I got a rare chance to just *be* with my random thoughts.  Phrases like "prepare the ground" and "lay the groundwork" began floating into my consciousness, not as just archaic idioms, but this time as GENIUS and very practical pearls of wisdom.  So this is what they mean by "prepare the ground for _______!!"

...Then I started humming the Indigo Girls song "Hammer and a Nail," especially the part about how you "gotta tend the Earth if you want a rose!!"  The Indigo Girls also have many pearls of wisdom...

...And last (it probably should have been sooner because I am supposedly a minister) I started thinking about the garden of Eden, the first profession, all the other Biblical references to gardening and farming.  How could someone who went to seminary be such a bad gardener when the Bible is FILLED with tips like this one:

"Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.’ And he said, ‘Let anyone with ears to hear listen!" (Mark 4:3-9)

That's not only a great spiritual metaphor, there's lots of practical gardening advice packed into that one!

...And as I was tilling some more I thought about faith and trust and this passage in Job that says,

"ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; ... Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?"  

With my hands deep in the soil, I thought about the fact that I can plant plants, till soil, and water, but I cannot actually make anything grow.  Planting is an act of faith.  Only God knows how to spring a seed to life or push a flower up through the dirt.  So to witness a plant's growth seems like witnessing the quiet and miraculous work of God.  And it reminded me not only of the amazing things God does, but gave me peace about what I can't do.  I cannot mend a layperson's broken heart, I cannot prove the wideness of God's mercy to those who would put God in a box, and I cannot chisel my son into a high-achieving, benevolent, joyful, Christian man.  All I can do is lay groundwork, plant seeds, nurture, and pray that God provides the results.

I'm proud to say that our asiatic jasmine is starting to thrive after getting in touch with my primeval profession and a little gardening advice from the Bible. After all those spiritual epiphanies in my yard, I think I'll be getting in touch with my primeval profession a bit more often from now on, and I hope you do too!  My yard can certainly use it!  And every day, the green spreads a bit more, proof that God's mischievous fingers have been close by all the time, meddling in my garden when I'm not looking!