The decaying process though is pretty amazing and beautiful in its own way and serves as a pretty good metaphor for these weeks of Lent. The dying and rising is what gardening is all about and what our lives are all about if we want to live them fully. We are dying to things in ourselves so that great compost is created for the new that should emerge. Most of the composting, breaking down and dying, happens in the cold, dark, rainy months; the freezing and thawing slowly completing the dust to dust, ashes to ashes process. In fact, warm winters can actually hinder the process. The hard stuff often leads to a richer return when it comes to growing and harvesting. We have a natural resistance to this, in fact our entire western culture resists this process. Dying to self is just too hard and can be a avoided.
The steady turn of the fork, heavy with soil and leaves, got me thinking of the Scottish Anglican Henry Francis Lyte song “Abide With Me.” He wrote this in 1847 while dying from tuberculosis. “Change and decay in all around I see / O thou who changest not, abide with me.” There is solid comfort in that mystery; a God who is not subject to the whims and winds of change, yet set into motion a world whose very life depends on dyings and deaths.