Last Friday was a beautiful, warm spring day. My wife and I took advantage of the warm temperatures to plant our annual vegetable garden.

We closed our garden last year by covering it with hay hoping that might replenish minerals in the soil with the hay slowly decomposing over the wintertime.

Unfortunately, the hay did not decompose much (note to self: do something different next fall) and we first had to scrape off the hay on top of the garden and then weed the garden. It seems the hay has weeds within it that started to grow in a number of places.

After the soil was ready, we planted tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, broccoli, zucchini, and acorn squash. Since we have little grandchildren, we also planted a row of sun flowers hoping the large flowers might impress them with their height. Another impressive fact is that the heads of immature sunflowers can change direction and track the daily change of the position of the sun in the sky. We thought that the grandkids might find that fact amazing. Their grandparents find it amazing!

This annual planting reminded me of the condition of a person’s soul. In life, we understandably tend to protect ourselves from outside forces that can either scare us or distract us from what is important. As we hunker down, we can hope we are safer but can also close ourselves off from what will help us. We develop weeds so to speak that cloud our outlook. We forget that God is present. When we remember to remove these weeds or distractions through the nurturing graces that we receive in the confessional and the Holy Eucharist, we find new life and ways of approaching life. We grow.

The result is we become more focused on the guiding light that is always present in our lives, our loving God. We then follow his light like a young sunflower and we are made better by the experience. That’s something to think about when planting a garden…

The noun, rumination, means a deep considered thought about something.

-By Deacon Tom Gryzbek