Container Grown

…to my blog. My name is Andrew, and I’m studying to become a Latin Catholic priest. The purpose of this blog is to allow readers to walk with me through the last few years of my priestly formation. I hope you will join me! Your company on the journey is most welcome.

Some may be wondering about the title of my blog, “Container Grown.” As I was thinking of fun, pithy titles, I tried to come up with something that could speak to who I am and where I’m from. Some of the most shaping experiences of my life have come from growing up in the tree nursery my family owns. My parents and grandparents have grown Japanese maples, rhododendrons, and the like for 45 years now, and that’s the world I grew up in. A blending of home and family with work and the outdoors. Growing up in rural Oregon with a wonderful family, my childhood was happy and wholesome. Thank you, Lord!

So, as I was fingering through those memories, and old family phrase came to mind. I used to hear it spoken by my dad or grandfather when they were describing to other nursery owners what kind of operation we Kelley’s ran: “Everything we do is container grown and in full sun.” Which is to say that none of the plants at the nursery are grown in the ground; everything is grown in a plastic pot, like these maples seen below.

There are advantages that come with growing a plant in a pot. Firstly, a container grown plant is easily moveable. It can be shuffled between greenhouses, loaded on a truck, stuffed in a car, given as a gift, and perhaps one day be removed from that cradling nursery pot to be given a more permanent place of residence in a garden somewhere. But until then, a container grown plant lives in suspense, not knowing where it might go or to whom it might belong, awaiting the day when it will be “turned loose” from its plastic pot to put down deep roots and do what trees do best – please the eye, give shade, and be a home for critters of all shapes and sizes.

Having been a student for my entire life, I feel as though I have been perpetually on the move. On the move from one state to another, from one school to another, from one course of study to another, from one job to another, and so on. My life so far has been a process of being prepared for something. When I was growing up at home as a farm kid, I was being prepared for an adult life as my parents taught me the skills and values they believed I would need to live well. As a college student, I was being prepared first for a career as an engineer, later for a career as a musician. Plans changed, not for the first time, and now I find myself being prepared for the priestly vocation. I, like a container grown plant, have moved from one place to another, sizing-up into larger pots as I grow, living in suspense of one day being turned loose to do the things I’ve been trained to do, to give what I’ve received, to become a part of a community, and put down a root or two.

I later realized that this title “Container Grown” and its nursery allusion were apt for another reason: the root of the term “seminary” (sem) is derived from the Latin word for “seed.” A seminary (or in Latin, a seminarium) is therefore a place where seeds are grown, which is to say that “seminary” is the Latin word for “greenhouse,” a greenhouse for priests.

Every seminarian is, in a sense, container grown. His vocation is not to be a seminarian forever; he is grown in the nurturing environment of the seminary with the idea that one day, he will leave the seminary and be transplanted into some corner of the world, and from that place, do what he was grown to do – love God and serve His people.

But there is still yet another sense in which I am “container grown,” and this third sense applies to you, too. We are all container grown in the sense that we are not destined to be in this world forever. You and I are in this world as pilgrims, on the move towards an eternal resting place. This world is not our home. Heaven is our home. Here below, the Church is our nursery, the nursery in which saints are grown, and we hope that one day we’ll be taken up from our pots and given eternal rest in the Father’s house.

That rest is not yet ours. We are on the move! Journeying together with Jesus in the Holy Spirit. This blog will detail highlights from my own journey. Allow me to say, once again, that you are welcome to share in it. Thank you for visiting my blog. I would ask you, from one container grown person to another, to pray for me. Be assured of my prayers for you, dear reader.