A mountain of green beans in the kitchen sink invite me to a time of rumination as I fall into a pattern of washing and snapping them into bite-sized pieces. Swish, see, snap, snap, set aside, next. It’s a good time to pray.
Tending to vegetables grown from tiny seeds, in awe of the master gardener who created the system that allows them to grow, is worship. Or it can be, if I don’t rush through the task as something just to get done.
These beans fed me in the currency of hope when I dug a shallow trench for them two months ago, in anticipation as I tended plants and watched them grow, and now in contemplation.
I could allow some of them to dry on the vine, plant them in the garden next year, and get exponentially more beans from a single dried one. I’ve done that in the past and it’s nothing short of a miracle.
But now I’m in a different season. I’ll blanch them and tuck them in the freezer and they will continue to feed me on frigid winter evenings when the garden sleeps under a blanket of snow and I’m grateful for the gift of staying indoors to wait for the season of hope.
