ESR student Suzanne Cole delivered the following message in Earlham School of Religion Worship on Thursday, April 4, 2013:

Out of a jumble and tangle of wild planting, it sounds very possible to acquire volunteer vegetables, doesn’t it? They sound like vegetables that appear where you forgot you planted vegetables. Which happens to the best of us. But no, volunteer vegetables are a little different. They’re vegetables that we didn’t know we planted in the first place. They can be charming little reminders of years past, left in our yard by letting a plant go to seed before harvest or they can be scrubby little root vegetables that appear after a head-scratchingly long germination time.  Volunteer vegetables can even appear from a scoop of half-finished compost applied to a waiting bed in anticipation of the actual planting, which would explain Sky’s cantaloupes and tomatillos last year.

I suspect everyone here has had a moment of extraordinary strength in their own time. The strength may have been physical, emotional, or spiritual. Maybe you held a friend up through their darkest days or even through your darkest days. Perhaps you organized an event during finals week and managed to excel at both. Or you accomplished something that was beyond your body as you know it like hefting furniture into a moving van to help a friend start a new life. Those moments of extraordinary being often happen with us and in us without a lot of mental engagement. Analyzing how we are able to accomplish something that is well beyond our perceived abilities comes later in the process. When we can finally sit down, take a breath, and say, “WOW!” is when the volunteer vegetables of our soul start to emerge.

You can read more here: http://esrquaker.blogspot.com/2013/04/volunteer-vegetables.html