Replanting?

the whole earthy creation up and into my wheelbarrow.

Alive, but uprooted, it sits there. Hearty enough to withstand frigid Alberta winters but, now removed, it might have hours or days to live if not replanted properly and wisely.

Covid-19 has felt like an uprooting for communities, neighbourhoods and churches in Canada. People require the close proximity of others to share their stories, to hear from each other, find courage, deepen their faith, and move forward with generous ambitions and hopeful renewal. My friends in Alcoholics Anonymous are helping each other through Zoom video calls while Lake Ridge Community Church, my faith community, fiddles with cameras and technology,

BY PRESTON POUTEAUX

but it always feels like a stopgap measure. We are like an uprooted tree, separated from each other. Tenuous.

So we get ourselves excited to relaunch, as they say. It is the word du jour for any business, government or nonprofit looking to indicate they are still alive. Like a rocket that can finally take to the skies, we are done being grounded. We want to get back to the freedom that we once had. Up and away and done with the tedious work of these ever-limiting concerns.

We talk of phases, measured steps in our relaunch. We are cautious and calculated, watch the news and follow protocol. Cases spike and we realize our relaunch kickstart super blastoff is not the fireworks show

we hoped for. Has anything even left the ground? We can’t sit close to each other, hug or pour each other coffee. Some days it feels like we’re back at the beginning. We fail to launch and feel, once again, the gravity of this moment.

I push the wheelbarrow over the curb, across the street and down a few houses to our neighbours’ garden. Theirs is just beginning with fresh, good, rich black soil like you see in gardening magazines and new mulch warming in the sun. My neighbours Colin and Kayla have been adjusting sprinklers, preparing seeds, and arranging sprouts according to the garden plan Kelly created for them.

This is the new home for the uprooted plants from our garden. A hole is dug. We add mycorrhizal, a fungus that grows in good soil to help plant roots thrive, and a few handfuls of compost. We flood the hole with water. Down on our hands and knees, we set in the plant and work our fingers around the root ball, making sure there are no air pockets. This is a new home for an old plant.

There is something else we do when we replant and it feels so destructive. If there are any flowers, we remove them. It is the plant’s job to focus on roots, not buds and fruit. Removing the flowers can help the plant grow roots downward to find water and nutrients, and leaves upward to gather sunlight – the flowers will come later. This year we care far more about the roots than we do the plant. All our focus is on what is below the ground.

We also have to transplant when the soil is warm, ensuring the roots are not too deep or sitting up out of the soil. We might have to set stakes or a trellis up to hold the plant while it roots, and we cover the ground around the perennial with mulch to protect the soil, keep weeds under control, and help the plant moderate temperature fluctuations. We are parents. We hunch over to care and lean back to adore.

In churches and communities we are not in the business of launching rockets as much as we may be in the work of gardening. We can’t stand over our communities with dismay that we are not seeing the kind of growth or performance we expect when we’ve endured such unprecedented and sustained shock. Our communities have been uprooted, and the very medium of our growth has been upturned in ways we have never experienced before. Tendrils of unseen networks are disconnected.

We serve our communities best when we do not expect them to produce flowers or fruit for a season or two, but walk with them in an extended time of recovery. We need to help our communities and churches reroot by inviting new ways to see and settle in to life after the pandemic. The shock is real. The time needed to recover is also real. We may need to withhold our expectation that we get back to doing what we did before. We may need to remove pressure to do more, especially if we see doing as a sign of health in recovery.

We are, in this way, environmentalists – those who care for what happens close to the ground. The best fruit ripens only when the health of the soil’s invisible places are nurtured. Our communities and churches need us to tend well and pay attention to the subtle work of relationships, sorrow, fear, hope and anxiety. We need to use our words. We pay attention to the ways we inspire our communities, not with false launches and hype, but honest acknowledgement of the exposure and loss we have experienced together.

We can’t prepare for the next season as detached or incorporeal planners gathering fuel for launch.

We need to help our communities and churches reroot by inviting new ways to see and settle in to life after the pandemic.

We can’t jet away from 2020. We must get close, listen, and return to a posture that nurtures the soul of those who grow with us. This is domestic work.

Today, communities and the Church in Canada need patience to resist fast solutions to get back to normal, and instead care for the relationships and experiences of those who have carried over with us into this new season.

The Church will return to doing many wonderful things. But for right now, in this time, we may have to care in a slower, more localized way. There may be more hope in nurturing than in launching.

Jesus was mistaken for a gardener on Easter morning. I pray many of us will be too.