Secret Places
May. 12th, 2010 06:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krikketgirlI love the book The Gardener, by Sarah Stewart. In it, a young girl travels from the country to a bakery in the big city. Her father has lost his job during the depression, and she is traveling to live with her uncle, who runs the bakery. Her uncle is taciturn, though not unkind.
The story is told in a series of letters back home, in which Lydia Grace talks about the people she meets, the friends she makes...and the plants that she is nurturing. Lydia Grace brought seeds from home to plant in window boxes, and sets about livening up the bakery.
In time, the store cat shows Lydia Grace a special, secret place: the rooftop of the building where the bakery is located. When she first sets eyes on it, it doesn't look like much--there is a cast-off bathtub and a few other odds and ends. It's tired and cluttered and not very beautiful.
Lydia Grace decides that she will transform this secret place into a beautiful place. Slowly, she works to bring in dirt and plants and makes it into a flowering garden as a surprise for her Uncle Jim, whom she hopes to make smile at least once.
Listening to this story this week reminded me of a conversation that my oldest son and I had about the levels of knowing someone--how, at heart, we are all unknown, but to God. In a sense, then, my heart is a secret place. Oh, out of the abundance of it the mouth speaks, and so everyone can get clues to what is in there--but its totality is not known to anyone, even Chris.
Truth to tell, at times it doesn't look like much. But reading The Gardener makes me wonder: am I adding good things to it? Am I working to transform it from a hot, cluttered space into a place of beauty? Am I carrying out the trash and planting it with good works and hopes and thoughts? Am I working toward that idea of a smile on my Father's face? Or am I just ignoring the stagnation and hoping He won't look?
The story is told in a series of letters back home, in which Lydia Grace talks about the people she meets, the friends she makes...and the plants that she is nurturing. Lydia Grace brought seeds from home to plant in window boxes, and sets about livening up the bakery.
In time, the store cat shows Lydia Grace a special, secret place: the rooftop of the building where the bakery is located. When she first sets eyes on it, it doesn't look like much--there is a cast-off bathtub and a few other odds and ends. It's tired and cluttered and not very beautiful.
Lydia Grace decides that she will transform this secret place into a beautiful place. Slowly, she works to bring in dirt and plants and makes it into a flowering garden as a surprise for her Uncle Jim, whom she hopes to make smile at least once.
Listening to this story this week reminded me of a conversation that my oldest son and I had about the levels of knowing someone--how, at heart, we are all unknown, but to God. In a sense, then, my heart is a secret place. Oh, out of the abundance of it the mouth speaks, and so everyone can get clues to what is in there--but its totality is not known to anyone, even Chris.
Truth to tell, at times it doesn't look like much. But reading The Gardener makes me wonder: am I adding good things to it? Am I working to transform it from a hot, cluttered space into a place of beauty? Am I carrying out the trash and planting it with good works and hopes and thoughts? Am I working toward that idea of a smile on my Father's face? Or am I just ignoring the stagnation and hoping He won't look?
