Thomas Merton

The snow keeps falling down. We shovel and plow and it keeps coming down and piling up. Life keeps coming at us. We deal with it and it keeps coming at us and piling up. When snow or life keeps coming at us too fast, it is time to slow down, do some planting and some deep growing. Today, Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, is a good time to start slowing down and get ready for the planting and slow death that precedes new life. This is a time of the year, late winter, that I am drawn to the writings of Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk who withdrew from life in a monastery and thus saw life more deeply and reported to us what life is all about. His writings are what I call eternal writings; they stand the test of time and read, with a few word changes, as they were written today. I understand that monks are gardeners and withdraw from life into nature. This makes sense and is something we can do in the cold of the snow or in the heat of the sun. Snow slows us down. When we slow down, we can see and hear better. “If you would hear God’s voice today, harden not your hearts.” (Psalm 95).

In the six weeks of Lent, leading up the remembrance of the death and resurrection of Jesus, I hope to plant some seeds in the greenhouse (sunroom), take more time to read and reflect and slow my life down once more. My life once again, is like my garden at times, too cluttered. One of the lessons I learned yesterday at Growing Power from Will Allen is that with fewer seeds and larger mounds of compost and fertile soil you can grow more than by crowding a lot of plants into a small space. This is a lesson of life; less can mean more, detachment can mean greater attachment, and simplifying can lead to more complexity. So this year I will build bigger mounds of fertile, worm-enriched compost and grow more food with fewer seeds. These six weeks of lent are a good time to begin anew. From ashes we grow and to ashes we must return.

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