Recently, I attended a very helpful workshop at Birmingham Botanical Gardens. Perhaps “Caring for Gardening Tools” is not what excites you, but please keep reading.
The Bible says that there is a season for everything under heaven. In winter, the gardener atones for sins of neglect in cleaning, sharpening, repairing and/or purchasing new garden tools. So, what does that have to do with Benedictine spirituality and the Christian life?
Chapter four of Benedict’s Rule provides seventy-four “tools” for living well whether you are in a monastery or not. From the Botanical Gardens workshop, I learned invaluable practical tips for how to care for my gardening tools which, I believe, transfer into wisdom for my spiritual life. I hope the analogy is instructive for you too.
Gardening tools must be kept clean of caked-on mud/debris and be disinfected. Otherwise, you risk rust as well as spreading fungus, disease, and parasites. Protect your investment with year-round good stewardship. Benedict’s workshop is concerned with building virtue, discipline, and good works as well as avoiding particular attitudes and behaviors that undermine harmonious community life.
After thorough cleaning, it’s time to sharpen your garden tools. Correctly sharpened shears, pruners, loppers, saws, shovels, and spades make gardening easier. Good habits and routines such as Lectio Divina, Liturgy of the Hours, contemplative prayer and meditation, examination of conscience, moderation and simplicity, humility and hospitality, caring for the sick, the elderly, and the poor, etc. are among the many tools to help us encounter the living God. Learning more in depth about Benedict’s tools and using them regularly will keep them sharpened.
At the workshop, an enviable variety of gardening tools were displayed. My most exciting discovery among them was the Root Slayer spade. All along, I have been digging into the hard root-infested, rock-filled soil in our yard with my poor old shovel. Shovels are designed for scooping and moving, not digging and cutting. No wonder I’ve struggled so hard (and nearly broken the shovel)! It’s important to choose the right tool for the job. Michael Casey wrote in Seventy-Four Tools for Good Living, “For Benedict’s list to be effective, however, we have to have acquired a certain level of self-knowledge and a capacity for radical self-honesty. Those who are complacent and self-righteous, who never admit to making mistakes or to being governed by weakness or blind to opportunities” will not likely benefit from The Tools for Good Works in the Rule of Benedict.
In the last chapter of his Rule, Benedict encourages acquiring further spiritual tools from the Old and New Testaments, the writings of the early Church Fathers and the Rule of Basil. You and I have the great benefit of later centuries of writings of the saints and other authors. More impressive than the gardening workshop’s large display of its tools, we have an enormous treasure trove of spiritual wisdom through the ages for living a happy and meaningful life.
January 1st, I began this new year rereading, as part of my daily Lectio Divina, Michael Casey’s wonderful book named above. Putting into practice these spiritual tools from Benedict’s Rule is a life-long quest. Casey quotes Abba Theodore from John Cassian’s Conferences: “One who is zealous to acquire for himself and make ready the tools of a particular trade does not do so merely to possess them and leave them idle…When the pursuit of going forward ceases, there will be a danger of going back.” To keep my momentum going forward in 2026, I will follow Benedict’s admonition from the Prologue, “First of all, every time you begin a good work, you must pray to him most earnestly to bring it to perfection.” Benedict melds dependance on the grace of God with our own “labor of obedience.” God gives us many tools for spiritual gardening and the power to use them. So, let us pick them up, use them appropriately, keep them sharp and well maintained throughout the year.
By Sister Sara Aiden Burress, OSB