About ten years ago I began creating small indoor container gardens that sat on my desktop as an aid to prayer and reflection. These contemplative gardens began as a way to create markers to help me enter into the liturgical calendar, but they increasingly became a way of life for me, providing a new technique for stirring my creativity, ordering my life, and deepening my spirituality. Sometimes my creations are inspired by the changing seasons of the liturgical calendar; at others, they grow out of the life situations that tug at my heartstrings either with joy or with sorrow. They increasingly give me joy and peace both in their creation and in their use, calling me to listen to the promptings of the spirit both within me and in the world around me.
In the first section of the book, I explore liturgical gardens and the ways they invite us to reimagine our spiritual practices for the seasons of the church calendar. Advent and Lent gardens in particular have brought new meaning to these seasons of waiting. Christmas and Easter gardens have intensified my joy in the story of God revealed in Jesus Christ. I have even created Epiphany and Pentecost gardens, more transient in their season but still important in their focus.
In the second section, my gardens and the meditations they give rise to revolve around scriptures or seasonal themes that have beckoned to me out of the joys and pains of my life and of the world around me. The Australian bushfires and the pandemic both featured heavily in my gardens during 2020. Others have scriptures like Psalm 91, and phrases impressed on me during times of discernment as their theme. These have all provided rich material for seasonal gardens the array of which continues to grow as I recognize how deeply meditating on my gardens can connect me more intimately to God.
