Witness of Stones

Published in "Imagine: Arts Ministry Magazine of Imago Dei" Winter 2009

   The Witness of Stones

            I'm creating a stone wall in my front yard - well, not exactly a wall, more of a stone ledge - around a piece of ground that slopes and sends topsoil scuttling each time it rains.  My intent is to create a garden sanctuary for summer butterflies and birds: a creation to steward the land, end erosion, and offer a rest site for traveling creatures.  Today, as I carried in the headstone, a flat piece of limestone chiseled by history and fossils, I remembered Joshua walking into the Promised Land, carrying stones as a witness.

            I always liked the inherent promise of home in those journey stories of the Israelites.  I've spent most of my life journeying, moving from place to place.  Until now. 

            I'm newly-married, and my husband and I bought this yard, and the attached house, a year and a half ago in December when it lay covered in snow.  By our first spring, I'd seen enough mud gullies to convince me I had to learn about yards and ownership. 

All the gardening books say plan first, but I didn't.  I just started.  From the gardening store, I learned ivy and vinca would spread and not die out in winter, so the first I did was buy two flats of two inch pots and planted them in the area of the worst drainage.  And then life got complicated, as life does, and summer came along, and grass grew.

            Now, if you have any gardening experience at all, you've already visualized the next problem - the vines rooted and grew down hill and made mowing the slope very difficult.  My husband, who mows the lawn, struggled with my intended sanctuary, and crabgrass took hold between the vines. 

In the cool of fall, I planted more vinca and dug in the handfuls of bulbs I'd ordered from a catalog.  I offered a prayer over my small, potential haven, asked that rains not wash it away over winter.  The thing is, with no experience in front yard gardens, I could only envision possibilities and stumble between steps.

            Life was a series of stumbles for the Israelites, too.  They'd wandered in the desert until all of the older generation, including Moses, were dead before they crossed into the Promised Land - a land, 'tis said, flowing with milk and honey...and a few unfriendly inhabitants...during the rainy season when the waters in the Jordan ran high.  A very messy plan.

            Joshua chose twelve men to carry stones across the river to set on the other side, and he built an altar to witness the story.  When life is complicated, you have to celebrate any success.   

My garden plot was certainly in disarray although the final version looked pretty good in my head; my unfriendly inhabitants were mostly crabgrass.  Creation must have been like this - put a few bulbs here, a creeping vine there, scatter around a few rocks and see what happens.

Over winter I studied garden magazines and scoured the Internet for gardening tips. I tried one of those fancy, interactive garden designing sites, but I only created confusion.   

I read of a plant called "butterfly milkweed," and my mind's eye remembered me as a teenager, swinging a machete through milo fields, scything weeds.  We left milkweed along fence rows because the monarchs rested there.  And when the lady slippers, as we called the pods, opened, we blew the silks to the wind. That was basically my problem: I'd learned how to work in a field but had no idea how to build a city yard. 

I knew if Dad were still living, he'd tell me how to go about this adventure; but new territory, I suppose, requires something else - a trust that no matter how messy the journey, faith in the outcome will somehow guide.        

I found my flat piece of broken limestone, marked with chisel lines and fossils, behind our farm's old tool shed.  It lay beside a broken piece of post stone.  Where did the two pieces come from, I wonder?  Did my dad or granddad bring them to the farm?  But like Joshua, my older generation has died and I'm left to create a new story.

This morning, after a friend unloaded a truckload of rocks from a piece of land she was clearing and set them as a boundary around this wild garden plot, I renewed my hope.  I'd seen the crocus bloom through the snow followed by tulips and Siberian iris.  The vinca survived the winter.  I could finally bring out the headstone from where it had wintered on the back porch and set it in place.

Throughout my years of rootlessness, I've returned from many journeys with a pocketful of rocks, and even now, seeing them reminds me of a particular day. Some of the stones are like my stories, rolled and smoothed by water, and some are as rough as my journey on the day I found them.  What will these garden stones say about me?

            Will they say here lives a woman who believes more in miracles that plans?  I wanted to stop the erosion, give the water something to feed rather than destroy, and I wanted a low-maintenance garden.  What then should have been my question?

            Perhaps I should have asked if I really knew what I was doing - but that's useless.  My years of wandering taught me to trust the call to move or to stay.  How could I know that planting a flower garden would come from a call to stop?    

Perhaps, then, the story has led me to another question: have I come to understand that stopping requires as much faith - and often more hard work - than the journey?

For Joshua's people, entering the Promised Land meant years of war and struggle.  I'm hoping my stopping will be a little more peaceful although I suspect crabgrass can be as unwilling to release its hold as any resident of Jericho.  I'll keep working at it.  And eventually, this garden will be my witness to stopping and a peaceful sanctuary for those who must still wander.

The End