I’m curious how many Anabaptist World readers will still be feeling Easter by the Thursday after. It’s an interesting thing to contemplate as I write during Holy Week. Right now, I can feel the swell of both passion and introspection. The time feels thick. And yet, even as I’m immersed in this week, I know next week will be very different.

There’s a Buddhist saying I love: “After enlightenment, the dishes.” Next week may feel a little like dishes.

That’s one of my favorite things about gardening, too. Yes, there are the four seasons, but what fascinates me most are the sudden shifts between them — sometimes from one week to the next.

Here in Florida, we’ve likely just come through our last cold snap of the year. A couple weeks ago, the brassicas and lettuces were cozy, and hot-weather crops like basil and tomatoes still felt a little far off, even though we had the starts going.

Now, suddenly, it’s warm. There are bug holes in the chard. The lettuces are growing furiously and also looking a bit stressed. The tomatoes are in the ground and already asking to be pruned. Two weeks ago now feels far away.

Of course, that’s not the same seasonal shift many of you are experiencing. For many readers farther north, this is not the move from cool to hot, but from frozen to unfrozen — from dormancy toward visible life. Maybe it’s already underway, or maybe, like for my friends at the Hermitage Retreat Center in Michigan, you can’t be sure until late May. That’s a different kind of resurrection. I still miss that, even after living in Florida since 2001. Easter pairs beautifully with the northern garden, where what looked dead begins, unmistakably, to live again.

Living in a subtropical climate has changed both my gardening and my theology. I still love the shared rhythm of Lent and Holy Week — the gift of knowing that many people are holding the same sacred story at the same time. But I’ve also become more attentive to the subtler seasons moving through our lives and communities.

The ancient Greek word kairos points to this kind of time: not just clock time, but a season marked by a particular spiritual quality.

Both Eastertide and the garden season are full of kairos – seasons within seasons.

We are one body, and yet resurrection arrives differently among us. I may be stepping into a warm afternoon to help with a class in a tropical fruit grove, while someone else is watching the first shoots emerge in a spring garden, and another is simply noticing the thaw.

The dishes will still be there. But if we are paying attention, so will resurrection.

Practice

Contemplate: What time is it where your food grows? In your own garden, perhaps — or on a local farm?

And what kind of time are you in? Do you see a time of resurrection happening?

Over the next week, you might take a little time to notice. What was the season before this one? Was the shift sudden or gradual? You might journal about it, or talk with a friend and compare notes.