Got to get back to the garden...

Last night, for the Solemnity of SS Peter and Paul, Br. Brendan and Br. Antonio prepared a meal of Indian cuisine, including spring peas from our garden. We have already been eating a good deal of chard and radishes this year. Gardening is a fair amount of work, and as we only began this garden two years ago, it is still 'catching up': the soil is just now really beginning to respond. We have also been blessed with a very warm spring and summer and the presence of a postulants, Brian, who is skilled at gardening.

Our long-range hope is to provide most of our fruits and vegetables from our own garden. Monks should, insofar as possible, be free from reliance on outside sources for their sustenance. We should rather be a colony from another world, our heavenly home, and completely reliant on God's providence as a result. This is especially difficult to pull off in the city, as we have found, but for that reason, all the more important that we keep at it.

The garden, as I mentioned in our most recent issue of Polis, is not simply a way to grow food and give some brothers some enjoyable time outdoors. Our primeval home was a garden, The Garden, and before Christ, the way back to the garden was blocked by a flaming sword. Christ has freed us from the anicent exile and welcomed us back into shalom with Himself. Our work is being purified from being merely a penance to being a life-giving expression of true human dignity. In a very tiny way, our garden is a sign that heaven is breaking into the world.

We have more than enough to eat from our garden, by the way, so look for some produce to be available after Mass on the weekend!
Peace to you and prayers always.