Garlic

“G is for garlic
O let us gush!
In praise and thanksgiving
For the savory rush!”
~Shelley Cramm~
https://www.gardenindelight.com/40-cloves-garlic-poem/

I practically drooled at the rustic image in front of me as I stood in the mud room, chatting with my friend about her garlic! Bunches of garlic hung drying, draped over a couple laundry racks. I had not ever planted garlic, and I could sense my ambitions soaring beyond my margin to add another item to my checklist. But my friend’s offer to share some of her garlic cloves dangled in front of me. I couldn’t but help imagine the long-stemmed scapes resurrecting through mulch, like coveted flower bulbs heralding in the spring season. Hesitant at first, found myself humming a child’s call-and-response chorus from my pre-school music class: “Can You Do This?” Yes, I can, you bet I can! Yes indeed, I can! (Levinowitz & Guilmartin), and that clinched the deal that I would be growing garlic!

Just as one would bury a garlic clove in autumnal soil, there are wafts of fairy tale lore embedded in the etymology of garlic. From the Latin unio (one large pearl),garlic is in the onion family. The Lord our God, the Lord is one (Deut. 6:4). The Chinese name translates to jewel among vegetables. Gar, ‘spear’ plus leac, ‘leek’ invokes a pungent—perhaps even painful—power; indeed, the stronger the smell, the more effective is its healing.

For the garlic bulb, it is in the dark spaces where root growth is encouraged. In fact, garlic requires cold for proper development; it is in the cold snap that the garlic head will divide into cloves. Where I wouldn’t typically choose to sit in cold and dark places, there are seasons of life where I find myself in such spaces. Even my writing flows best in the nocturnal reaches of the morning, and as I chip away at the crevices on the page, I occasionally strike upon a “jewel” of inspiration.

The day I planted my garlic, the garden bed was soggy. Weeks of dry that had yielded a concrete earth was followed by days of torrential rains, with a forecast of more rain, leaving me a narrow window for setting out the cloves. But even mud can teach me, even as Jesus willingly used mud to heal the blind man.        

Well, life can be muddy and messy, at times, and as the gloppy mud heavily caked my garden shoes, I planted my garlic cloves, determined to offer up any blind spots for Him to heal my heart, also, and resurrect any ruinous circumstances in the relationships in my life. Down went the cloves into the cold, goopy dark, and as I covered them, I prayed:  Father, heal [this relationship]. It feels cold and lonely right now. Resurrect it to new life. Take what has been painful and use even the messy circumstances to make a miracle. Take what is caked in mud and misunderstanding and grow healing; let there be a jewel of unity that is multiplying even now through this coming winter season.

“As we die to our ways, we are resurrected to His.”
Sound of Heaven, Symphony of Earth
Ray Hughes

“…the desolate wastelands (painful circumstances) will be rebuilt. The desolate fields will be cultivated, replacing the former wasteland…They will say, ‘This wasteland has become like the garden of Eden, and what used to be desolate ruins are now fortified and inhabited’…”
~Ezekiel 36:33-37 ISV~