Gardening is a Redemptive Act

There is a lot of frustration in our gardening plans going arye, and it was compounded by the fact that we started early this year—the first week of March.  We planted inside.  We have already been caring for our tomato plants for two months now.  Most of them are a foot tall already, before going outside.  It has been brilliant.

And now we’re stuck without any soil.  We can’t add more because the chemicals will just leach back in, so we are building up.  We ordered 67 nursery containers last night.  We’ll fill them with dirt and scatter our plants all over the yard.  There is redemption through hardship.  And I will be so grateful to toil in our garden knowing how easily we could have been left with nothing.

God has called us to do this since the beginning, to do justice where there is injustice and hardship, to give mercy where there is emptiness and defeat. Gardening teaches us that life is, as Tolkien would put it, eucatastrophic: it is a good catastrophe.  When things seem hopeless there is always a way of redemption.  The pilgrim’s path is never closed to those on the Way, no matter how hard that Way is.  No matter how hard we have to toil.  And if it is too hard, too bleak, too grim, we must pick each other up and keep going. We are running a race after all, and I want my crown at the end.  I want to be redemptive, to resurrect tainted soil, to "practice resurrection" as Berry puts it.  And most of all, I want my fresh tomatoes.

—
You can find more out about Tolkien’s idea of eucatastrophe then you ever wanted to know in my thesis "Sub-creation: The Image of God and Eucatastrophe."

The Berry quote comes from his poem "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front."