Daily Reading for June 23

We have three compost heaps, and even they are not capacious enough to contain all the castoffs of our garden and our kitchen. When the leaves begin to fall, we will have to begin a new pile near the border of our small woods. Our compost piles include a variety of vegetable material: carrot peelings, strawberry hulls, tomato prunings, the weeds I have dug before they have gone to seed, grass clippings, coffee grounds, eggshells, cornhusks, dry leaves, melon rinds. Although some people might consider the contents of our piles to be “garbage,” this material is not garbage. As it decays, assisted by earthworms as well as by organisms I cannot even see, my compost becomes “black gold,” rich humus that will contribute to the garden’s future well-being.

Composting teaches me that nothing in life is, in fact, “garbage.” The way of nature is the way of use and reuse. When this lunchtime’s carrot peeling is dumped on top of the seething compost pile, it enters into the slow process of becoming fertilizer for next summer’s crop of carrots.

I learn, from observing nature’s economy, that God intends me also to use all that I am given. I am meant to use my gifts and skills, my sorrows, and all the random happenings of life, spreading them out, as it were, in the fresh air of God to be transformed so that they can become life-giving, both for myself and for the world around me.

From Organic Prayer: A Spiritual Gardening Companion by Nancy Roth. Copyright © 1993, 2007. From Seabury Books, an imprint of Church Publishing. Used by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated, New York, NY. www.churchpublishing.org