Tombs, Wombs and Gardens

I find the annual transition from summer to autumn a bittersweet time. Even as my favorite season of summer comes to an end, I anticipate the comfort of cozy sweaters, warm socks, and hot beverages. I take in the beauty of the colorful changing leaves, while aware that they signify a death taking place within the tree. I pull dry, dead vegetable plants out of the garden, even while still enjoying their fruits, yet alive in my kitchen.

I encountered these “circle of life” mysteries in unforgettable ways during the years that I helped out in a huge vegetable garden on a friend’s farm. The whole process of planning, planting, composting, harvesting, preserving (and eating 😊), and then resting the beds, has always deeply resonated with me. At the end of every season, we would cover some of the beds with compost – kitchen scraps, manure, weeds, and other “waste” from the garden – that had been tossed onto the compost piles throughout the spring and summer. Then we would cover the composted beds with sheets of black plastic, further encouraging decomposition as well as revitalization of the soil. It was a rather “fragrant” process, if you know what I mean. By the time planting would come around again, this place of death and endings would become a place of life and new beginnings.

This is a beautiful mystery: God working with the “waste” produced through death, and transforming it into valuable and necessary ingredients to feed and nurture new life in the next season. And so He does with you and me. In God’s hands, the “waste” experienced with every death, be that the death of a dream, a relationship or a plant in my garden, becomes a precious resource.

With God, I can accept that as I sit with this season’s waste – the pain of hopes crushed, wounds inflicted, desires unmet – and grieve their loss, I know that this is not a dead end. The scraps may lie dead in the tomb of my heart for a season. But in God’s perfect timing, grace begins to act. The composted scraps become rich, fertile ground for new seeds to sprout. At some mysterious and undetectable moment, the tomb becomes a womb.

“When you hear that the Lord went down to hell, and did a glorious work, do not imagine that these things are so very far from your own soul…When you hear of sepulchers, do not think only of visible ones; your own heart is a sepulcher and a tomb.” – St. Macarius of Egypt

“Interiorly, the tomb symbolizes the empty place of our hearts wherein we frequently experience death. In this place of dying, we might feel miserable and hopeless. But ironically, the tomb can also be a womb of sorts. The womb, like the tomb, is an empty, dark place, but also a place that breeds and fosters new life.” – Father Gregory Cleveland, Awakening Love, an Ignatian Retreat with the Song of Songs

In the Garden of my Heart

As I reflected on the Lord’s death and burial recently, these familiar verses spoke to me in a new way:
“After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews, asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission; so he came and removed his body. Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden, there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid.” – John 19:38-41

Imagine this scene. Joseph, Nicodemus, our Blessed Mother, Mary Magdalene and John sharing intimate moments of reverencing our Lord’s Sacred Body in death and ultimately laying His body in the tomb in the garden.

Let us imagine our Lord’s presence in the garden of our hearts. He willingly allows Himself to be buried in the tomb within the garden of our hearts. There, His blood and water, coming from His pierced side, fertilize the dead ground in our hearts. His love and mercy penetrate all our waste places. He is making beauty right there in the ashes within our hearts. Lord, help us to believe in Your promise that new life is springing forth here, even now.

“See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” – Isaiah 43:19

What deaths and endings are you facing in this season of your life? I pray that you might ponder the thoughts and scriptures herein as you and the Lord rest in the garden tomb in your heart, anticipating resurrection.

Closing Prayer

Lord, I need Your grace to more peacefully accept the deaths happening in my heart and in my life. Teach me to reverence each death. Help me to gather up all the grieving parts of myself, that we might share grace-filled moments of intimacy and communion as we witness what is and what is not.

Remind me that new life will spring forth from the fertile ground of this death. Just as we stand assured that this process will unfold in nature season after season, may we believe in the process unfolding within our very beings. The work is all Yours Lord. For our part, may we offer our docile acceptance in the seasons of dying. May we stand, hand-in-hand with You, in trustful anticipation of the new season just ahead.

Copyright 2024, De Yarrison