My gardening ethic has changed pretty drastically since I first set out to grow something as an adult.

In those early days in Memphis, I knew nothing about the native soil, season-timing, or plants that thrive here. I had to make a study of what belongs in this place in order to figure out how to use my Iowa-garden-instincts to grow something in this Midsouth environment.

In addition to my garden know-how, my ideas about ‘taming the yard’ have changed, too. I think that’s a pretty common way to think about gardening or yard maintance: conquering something formidable and wild…taming something, domesticating it for our enjoyment. These days, though, I think less about conquering and more about partnership.

I’ve been influenced by so many people along this journey. First, Wendell Berry, then Mary Reynolds, and more recently the work and thinking of Robin Wall Kimmerer. There’s an important thread through all their work: We are not here to master the environment. We are, in fact, members of it.

Being a member of a community means I have a role to play. My role, while important, is not the end-all-be-all. The plants in the space of earth I call my garden have an intelligence I do not. (They make food from the sun!) The creatures that have called my garden home will make it such long after I’m gone (or their descendants will, at least).

There is something both humbling and empowering about being a member and not a master, about conquering giving way to partnering. I have work to do, but I am beholden to the other members of the community. I care-take, certainly, but I do so aware not just of what I would like from the garden, but of what it might need. There is an understanding in me that grows each year I participate with this garden: we are woven together in some way that I barely grasp with my human-ness. Perhaps I am unlearning my way into something.

So, too, we are branches of one vine. Jesus talked about it, as I’m sure you know, in John 15. When I’ve thought about that passage before, I suppose my focus has always been on the me, the single branch, connected to Jesus, the Vine Himself, and I think that’s the way we’re often taught to think about God-relationships in the West. I, thou, etc. One on one.

But a vine hardly ever has one branch! If it’s a healthy vine, like my native honeysuckle growing out on the arbor, it’s made up of many, many branches. Some wander up, curling their way across the top of the arch, others twirl around the main vine in a curly strand, while still others head back down to the base of the arch, circling the base of the old tree that the archway is built around. All these beautiful branches make up the vine itself. It’s all of them together that makes it a truly impressive plant and a food source for the pollinators.

So here we are, branches connected to the life-giving vine. We head different directions sometimes, finding our own way to travel as we flower in season, making food for the pollinators and delighting the hummingbirds. We are one, even in our differences.

May we learn to embrace this interconnected life-filled belonging of the Vine.