"Spring Planting" by Rev. Barbara Merritt

[Memos from Rev. Barbara Merritt and Rev. Tom Schade]

M I N I S T E R’S   M E M O


“Spring Planting”


     The city of Worcester approached the church in 1986 hoping we would
purchase some flowering trees to line State Street. They would pay for the
actual planting. We would buy the trees. I thought the purchase price was
pretty steep ($100 a piece). But I happily imagined that they would bring in
a flatbed truck with 20-foot trees, full and mature. Members of the
congregation, Gummi Gooch, Bob Bennett, Chuck Dewey, Bob Hess and Bob
Whipple fronted us the money since there was nothing in the budget to cover
the cost.



     When the saplings arrived, I was crushed. Each tree was less than
6-feet tall. They had more in common with Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree
than with any thriving future arboretum. Each thin trunk supported two or
three spindly branches. I didn’t think they’d survive the winter.



And indeed, storms over the years have broken off more than a few of the
weaker boughs. In dry years they have looked like they might wilt away. And
they’ve been covered with their share of New England ice and snow.



But this spring their white blossoms are so massive that they almost touch
the trees on the Methodist side of the road. And while I was paying
attention to something else, they have grown into stately trees, the tallest
now nearly 40-feet tall! They look like they’ve always been there. But some
of us remember when there was only a cracked cement sidewalk; with no shade
in the hot sun, no glorious flowering spring-time display, no brilliant red
and orange canopy in the fall. This faithful community provided the
seedlings. And God and nature and time completed the work.



For those of us who want our rewards now, who want our satisfaction quickly,
who’d like to imagine a secure and predictable future, trees provide a
helpful spiritual teaching.



They don’t look like much when they start out. There is no way of predicting
which trees will survive and which will perish. (One of our trees on State
Street didn’t make it after a particularly fierce storm.)



Trees along a city street will be bumped by large trucks and visited by
neighborhood dogs. Small children will take a swing on not-very-strong low
lying limbs. And the winter salt and sand will be plowed frequently onto the
limited small square of soil.



And yet despite all these challenges and trials and less than ideal
circumstances, four lovely Bradford pear trees are now an integral part of
State Street, dazzling the neighborhood and offering their free beauty to
all who see them.



On Sunday, May 18th, we will be celebrating a fresh planting on Main Street.
Parishioners, members of the Garden Committee, have planned and discussed,
and written grants, and spread horse manure and newspaper, and planted and
weeded and watered. What was once a rather pitiful and sandy lawn now looks
exciting and well tended. In time, these young bushes will grow and the
plantings will fill in. Twenty years from now I suspect that pedestrians
will look at our well-established garden and say: “Oh yes, that lovely
garden has always been there.”



But we, who are witnesses at its beginning, will know differently.
Hopefully, we’ll remember our first birthday celebration of our front yard
garden: a gift to the city, a sign of our own environmental stewardship and
the promise of good things to come.






There is a persistence to life that is inspiring. There is a capacity to
thrive and to grow, which ought to invite our awe. To all gardeners
everywhere who plant with faith, may we find ways to express our
appreciation. And as we walk amidst the loveliness of early spring, may we
be aware of the visionaries and diggers-in-the-dirt who planted hopefully.


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