Planting and tending lessons

At our mid-week Caim this Spring (NZ time) we set about a garden ministry. Each Saturday morning we took on a garden and dug veggie plots, went back and planted seeds or seedlings, or simple weeding and tidy up.

Closer to home, I decided this year to plant some veggies too. It started something looking like this -

sugar snap peas, sweet corn(!), lettuce, Rocket, beetroot, broccoli, red onions, carrots, parsnip, and butternut squash.
a venerable harvest to share around with friends and neighbours.





In a time of huge ministry change for us all at Highgate, but also myself, the little garden plot has served to remind me of Peterson's 'Under the Unpredictable plant' where he uses a gardening image for ministry.

I confess it has helped me through the past months and weeks since Martin just left a few weeks ago. tending these plants, just enough shelter too as it has even hailed recently, delicately taking out the weeds and watering as required... all the gentle reverence for pastoral care.



So here is a recent update on my patch. See how they grow. It was hard holding back at that crucial stage of simply placing the seeds in the soil. Waiting and waiting and waiting.

With some thinning out some should grow even more, but I hope to harvest some lettuce and rocket for making a fresh salad with plenty taste. Yum!

Reading the Everyday

Having been reading and thinking and attempting, as last post, to find ways to get us to consider our 'embeddeness' in our locations in mission, I'm grateful to Paul Fromont for this via Maggi Dawn. Its an article in Thirdway Magazine from John Davies. (Though its much more too from his blog here.)

This familiar place?

I came across a way of reading the local context which I adapted for our Annual Meeting purposes.

It is both a visual on the streets around us, buildings, as well as simnply noting which sde of the street people mainly walk on and why? to use of parks and are the seats comfortable, etc, etc. and there's a challenege to name the people who work in the cafes and shops along Highgate. A small challenge really.

Actually what I would love to do, and may yet again, is to get people to walk Highgate with an eye and sense of people movements and much more. It moves us beyond just looking to sensing. I liked that. Then we would display findings and discuss it in considering how we are embedded in this context and what locally could be improved in our environment, etc.

This is the bear bones of a method derived from the RSVP Cycles (Halpern and Halpern) Sadly, I cannot get my hands on a copy of this and so gleaned from the beb, but if anyone, knows anyone I could borrow from then it would be great to read that book.



Interestingly, people using our facilitires and in the congregation have had curious interest too in the display in the main foyer area. Pre-school Music parents/grandparents and others. Mmmm!









I had loads of photos and comments and some fun bits for kids to find MArtin and/or me lying on benches hidden around the display. Also some fun photos from our youth along the way too. Also tried to note some changes to properties and in shop use etc. Lots of options to it really.