As ice and snow receded from my yard this week, the ferns and bushes showed their haggard faces. 

The plants got a beat-down, for sure. But are they dead, or just in need of a little TLC?

I learned a trick from my mom called the ​“scratch test.” Use your fingernail to scrape off a little bit of bark, and if you see green, the plant still has life in it.

I’m happy to report everything in the yard passed the scratch test, but it got me thinking. Our souls can also be battered by grief or distraction, and signs of life are hidden. My mom is not only a wise gardener, but she’s a pastor who taught me the importance of scratching the surface to see if we’re alive…

For each of us, as individuals—How can we tell if we’re alive and awake to God in the fullest possible sense?

For our faith communities—Where is spiritual growth and where have things stalled or rotted? What are the nutrients uniquely available in Christian community?

We know that all life is a gift from God, mysterious and divinely imparted. ​“The seed sprouts and grows, but the farmer doesn’t know how.” 

Yet somehow God included our participation in the life cycle. 

We are responsible for receiving God’s gifts of nourishment. We are responsible for turning toward the light. We are even responsible, to a degree, for softening the soil of our own hearts so God’s Word falls on fertile ground.

How do we do all this? In other words… How do we become fully alive?

This question serves as the thematic arc for the newsletter this year. I’m letting you in on that big picture so you can be thinking with us about how to sustain spiritual flourishing over the long haul. We will share essays, excerpts, experiences, and podcast episodes to spark and sustain hope and joy. We will explore how to disrupt habits and patterns that choke our connection to Christ, the Vine. 

We’ll find deep wisdom for spiritual thriving as we continue to look to the Master Gardeners of the spiritual life — the classic voices and the contemporary guides.

I’ll leave you with a few words from one of my favorite books, The Secret Garden.

“That one?” [Mary] said. ​“Is that one quite alive quite?” 

Dickon curved his wide smiling mouth.

“It’s as wick as you or me,” he said; and Mary remembered that Martha had told her that ​“wick” meant ​“alive” or ​“lively.”

“I’m glad it’s wick!” she cried out in her whisper. ​“I want them all to be wick. Let us go round the garden and count how many wick ones there are.”