Thursday - Weed, Tend, Move Closer

A walled enclosure marking space apart

Us versus them in concrete form

Hiding all those things we are hoping to forget

Yet when we come up barren, 

lacking fruit, leaves, or berries, nothing to lend us praise

We come to sorrow we tear our wounds

And grieve in loud estate

Giving up on the weeds is the biggest mistake

Time heals all wounds... when they are tended

Cared for, cleaned, and bandaged against the rot

Ever creeping closer to becoming a person

We grasp waiting but waiting needs to be let go

For that joy-filled love-steeped quiet moment

When waiting is overcome

I was thinking about the story of the fig tree in Luke 13 and the different ways we can put ourselves in that parable. If we think of ourselves as the tree, we can see that others can get frustrated that gifts we have are not bearing fruit (parent/teacher-child relationships). If Jesus is then the gardener that wants to give more tending, then it seems to say that sometimes we need tending with manure in order to grow, we need to tend, to be tended, with the suckiest parts of our lives because that is how we grow and bear fruit. Gardeners use manure because it has lots of nutrients. What are the nutrients in the hardest places of our lives helping us to grow?