CREATOR GOD, WHAT WAS IT LIKE WHEN YOU CREATED THE WORLD?

Lord of life, 
when You created Your garden, 
did you sink your hands into the cool dawn-kissed earth,  
kneel down, smell the soil, 
then breathe into it oxygen, archaea, bacteria, nitrogen, potassium?
Did ants, fungi, isopods, and worms come next? 
And what about the deer, those vigilant garden browsers -- 
hmmmm, tell me about them, their purpose.   

When You created Your garden, 
did you heave glacier-fondled river rocks out of where you envisioned 
Rosy pussytoes nodding, wild bergamot beckoning bees, 
Idaho fescue and Dunhead sedge bending in the wind, 
and yarrow feathering the surface?
Was your soil heavy clay, sifted silt, or sandy (like mine)? 
Did you add peat moss, compost, sheep manure?
And what about Your muscles -- uhhh, did they ache?  

When You created Your garden, 
Thank good-ness, you remembered the sunshine and rain.
You even forged snow to lullaby the plants and creatures and all things bright and beautiful
at 35 below.
And You saw that it was good. 

When I created my garden this spring, brand new and tender, 
I saw that it was
uhhh...really…hmmmm…
Your garden all along.
And together, behold, we see that it is good. 
Very good.  

Inspired by the theme of the 2021 Synod of the Diocese of Kootenay:  Behold! I am  doing a new thing!  Isaiah 43: 18-19, and written on "The Day of Sacred Creation" in which we were invited to create something new.   Copyright 2021 Catherine Ripley