´óÏó´«Ã½

Good Morning<?xml:namespace prefix = "o" ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

I’m a keen gardener, with responsibility for the synagogue vegetable patch. Each day I like to see what’s ripened overnight.

At this season in Ancient Israel the first fruits were brought in thanksgiving to Jerusalem. Descriptions of the journey are filled with nostalgia. As they carried their baskets of figs and grapes the pilgrims would sing: ‘Our feet have stood within your gates, Jerusalem’. They felt connected to the land with bonds of labour and love.

It’s a relationship we seek to rediscover today, as urban living increasingly alienates us from the earth.

I was recently told: ‘In future most people will experience trees and animals through virtual reality only’. Horrified, I hoped this was wrong.

Our spirit is deeply connected to the spirit of nature, the rhythm of our life to the rhythms of dawn and dusk, spring and autumn. Wordsworth was surely right in his intuition

Of something far more deeply interfused

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean…and in the mind of manÌý

Ìý

Engagement with the earth, its soil, seasons and seeds, educates the heart through the wonder of growth, teaching gratitude and humility. Nature is among our most important teachers.

Ìý

I often garden as the children emerge from school, partly to see their joy as they pick the strawberries, but also to share with them how working the soil grows us, as well as the plants.

Ìý

Every child deserves the chance to be a gardener.

Ìý

God, as we garden your world, may your world garden us.

Ìý