"Good Friday Gardening" by Rev. Barbara Merritt

Tue Apr 3 12:40:45 CDT 2007

.M I N I S T E R ' S   M E M O

"Good Friday Gardening"

The longest war in the history of the world is not Iraq. You have to back to
another millennium, in a time before the common era. From roughly 264 BCE to
146 BCE the Greeks and the Romans were at war with the Phoenicians. They
were fighting over the “oil” of their time, access to trade routes and the
power of their respective empires. Called the “Punic Wars,” the city that
had to be controlled was Carthage, the shipping center of the Phoenicians on
the Northern Coast of Africa. As legend has it, in 146 the Romans razed the
city, literally burning it to the ground, all of its structures and all of
its art. Then the conquerors, perhaps symbolically, sowed the earth with
salt. It was an ancient custom that was supposed to insure that this earth
would never again be fruitful.
Historians now believe that the “salt story” was probably an “add-on” by an
18th century Roman scholar. Scientists have proven that while salt is
initially destructive, the earth has a way of quickly cleansing itself of
the foreign material. The whole discussion is academic anyway, because it
was the Romans themselves who rebuilt Carthage a century after their
victory. They constructed great bath houses and grand structures. My oldest
son, Robert who was in Carthage last week, tells me that the entire city is
now an archeological site. Those who pillaged and plundered and destroyed,
have themselves left only ruins. (As Robert waits to see whether the Peace
Corp program in Guinea will be reinstated after all the civil unrest, he and
another volunteer are traveling in Tunisia and Morocco and Sicily and
Sardinia. He is visiting parts of the world that are unlike anything I have
ever experienced.)
My recent travels have had me walking around the base of Bancroft Tower (a
30-minute round trip from my back door.) But there are also local surprises
in the neighborhood. On a wonderfully warm day last week, when a gentle
breeze, 60 degrees, and the singing birds made spring seem like a real
possibility, I was puzzled to see how many small stubborn piles of snow were
lurking under trees and had settled in on the shady side of the street. On
Metcalf Street in the gutter a rather graceful ice cave has been hollowed
out, carving a lovely bridge of snow. Only in April, I’m not especially
eager to appreciate the beauty of anything frozen.
On that warm day, I wanted to work in the yard to clean away the branches
and leaves, to work (yet again) on the lawn and to put the garden in some
semblance of order. Unfortunately, one cannot do much with mud. The yard is
still far too wet to allow any fussing. I must bide my time.
Among the rocks and the untended mud, a few green shoots are coming out of
the ground. The buds are starting to swell on the forsythia. And the willow
trees are turning yellow. Still, the branches on the maples look like the
dead of winter. And the occasional snowdrops and crocuses that are making an
appearance are clearly expressing a “minority opinion.” The calendar and the
equinox may have shifted into spring, but winter is still in command. The
earth in Worcester might not have had as much “salt” this year, because of a
mild and relatively snowless winter. But a pessimist looking out his or her
window would have every reason to be skeptical about the return of an
abundant and glorious spring.
Yet it is just out of the muddy, messy ruins of winter that nature will be
building a new world every bit as splendid as a new city rising up out of
the devastated ruins of war. There is something in life itself, in the human
spirit, as well as in the natural world that keeps coming back after death
and defeat and despair.
When it looks like the worst has happened, when there seems to be no
possibility for a good outcome, when the very earth itself seems to be “sown
with salt,” then the gardeners begin their work. To dig in muddy, rocky soil
isn’t easy. It doesn’t come without cost. But it is precisely in the ground
we stand on, that a new heaven and a new earth will arise.

                                                            Barbara

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