What do you think?
Rate this book
Garden Songs: A Spiritual Formation Field Journal
"These are songs sung in gardens. In Eden and exile. In Gethsemane and other lonely places. Steps away from Golgotha at both morning and noon. And from the edges of paradise, following the sound of rustling leaves from the tree of life."
Cheryl Velk’s intimate account of her walk with God across the terrain of the heart is ultimately his story more than hers. From childhood to midlife, the line between sacred and secular fading with every step, she shares with us words poured out between here and there. Her conversations with God, herself, and all of us taking the form of essays, poetry, songs, and prayers. As we witness a life devoted to God but still facing the challenges, questions, and sorrows of this life, we witness an unfolding discovery of God’s tenderness and faithfulness toward every life abandoned to him.
Though personal, Garden Songs: A Spiritual Formation Field Journal digs into God’s artistry not just in our own lives but in us as his family. When the risen Jesus was briefly, through tears, mistaken for a gardener that first Easter morning, it wasn’t entirely a mistake. He came to grow us like a garden—together. A garden God walks in again.
Available in both e-book and paperback.
Cheryl Velk’s intimate account of her walk with God across the terrain of the heart is ultimately his story more than hers. From childhood to midlife, the line between sacred and secular fading with every step, she shares with us words poured out between here and there. Her conversations with God, herself, and all of us taking the form of essays, poetry, songs, and prayers. As we witness a life devoted to God but still facing the challenges, questions, and sorrows of this life, we witness an unfolding discovery of God’s tenderness and faithfulness toward every life abandoned to him.
Though personal, Garden Songs: A Spiritual Formation Field Journal digs into God’s artistry not just in our own lives but in us as his family. When the risen Jesus was briefly, through tears, mistaken for a gardener that first Easter morning, it wasn’t entirely a mistake. He came to grow us like a garden—together. A garden God walks in again.
Available in both e-book and paperback.
253 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 10, 2020
About the author
Cheryl Velk
1 book5 followersAuthor of the book Garden Songs: A Spiritual Formation Field Journal — about 90 of my essays, poems, song lyrics, and prayers, all woven together into a larger story...
"These are songs sung in gardens. In Eden and exile. In Gethsemane and other lonely places. Steps away from Golgotha at both morning and noon. And from the edges of paradise, following the sound of rustling leaves from the tree of life."
Cheryl Velk’s intimate account of her walk with God across the terrain of the heart is ultimately his story more than hers. From childhood to midlife, the line between sacred and secular fading with every step, she shares with us words poured out between here and there. Her conversations with God, herself, and all of us taking the form of essays, poetry, songs, and prayers. As we witness a life devoted to God but still facing the challenges, questions, and sorrows of this life, we witness an unfolding discovery of God’s tenderness and faithfulness toward every life abandoned to him.
Though personal, Garden Songs: A Spiritual Formation Field Journal digs into God’s artistry not just in our own lives but in us as his family. When the risen Jesus was briefly, through tears, mistaken for a gardener that first Easter morning, it wasn’t entirely a mistake. He came to grow us like a garden—together. A garden God walks in again.
"These are songs sung in gardens. In Eden and exile. In Gethsemane and other lonely places. Steps away from Golgotha at both morning and noon. And from the edges of paradise, following the sound of rustling leaves from the tree of life."
Cheryl Velk’s intimate account of her walk with God across the terrain of the heart is ultimately his story more than hers. From childhood to midlife, the line between sacred and secular fading with every step, she shares with us words poured out between here and there. Her conversations with God, herself, and all of us taking the form of essays, poetry, songs, and prayers. As we witness a life devoted to God but still facing the challenges, questions, and sorrows of this life, we witness an unfolding discovery of God’s tenderness and faithfulness toward every life abandoned to him.
Though personal, Garden Songs: A Spiritual Formation Field Journal digs into God’s artistry not just in our own lives but in us as his family. When the risen Jesus was briefly, through tears, mistaken for a gardener that first Easter morning, it wasn’t entirely a mistake. He came to grow us like a garden—together. A garden God walks in again.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 7, 2025
This is a curious book. A sweet book. An odd book, too, but in the best possible way: part poetry collection, part autobiographical reminiscence, part annotated Biblical commentary, part devotional, part a peek into the author’s secret diary. It deftly walks the fine line between feeling intensely personal and yet staying broadly applicable to anyone searching for truth, compassion, and meaning in a confusing, sometimes painful, even seemingly hostile, world. And it accomplishes that trick without feeling the least bit pretentious.
The writing itself is also often beautiful, even masterful. These lines about growing up, for example: “Some kids seem to grow without ever experiencing what anyone else would call an awkward year. Growing with the beauty and ease of an ice crystal on glass, its pattern expanding perfectly until it fills the whole window. No research paper explaining the mechanics of it will ever keep us from staring in awe at the artistry.
“Others, like me, have always grown unevenly. Like trees.
Losing and gaining many times over the things that make them most valued by others. Bending and sometimes one particular limb breaking with the weight of a harder season. Branches taking new directions, abruptly.”
I enjoyed the book a great deal. Benefitted from it, too. Felt strengthened and encouraged, less alone in my struggles. It’s a beautiful, deeply thoughtful work. Brava, Cheryl.
The writing itself is also often beautiful, even masterful. These lines about growing up, for example: “Some kids seem to grow without ever experiencing what anyone else would call an awkward year. Growing with the beauty and ease of an ice crystal on glass, its pattern expanding perfectly until it fills the whole window. No research paper explaining the mechanics of it will ever keep us from staring in awe at the artistry.
“Others, like me, have always grown unevenly. Like trees.
Losing and gaining many times over the things that make them most valued by others. Bending and sometimes one particular limb breaking with the weight of a harder season. Branches taking new directions, abruptly.”
I enjoyed the book a great deal. Benefitted from it, too. Felt strengthened and encouraged, less alone in my struggles. It’s a beautiful, deeply thoughtful work. Brava, Cheryl.
August 10, 2021
If you are a lover of word pictures and poetry, you will want to read this book. Cheryl Velk shares her most intimate moments with thought-provoking descriptions that take you to the depths of her relationship with Jesus. You will want to chew on her pieces one at a time, mulling them over and then coming back to discover more. She is a master with analogy, and her vulnerability is refreshing.
Read
May 6, 2026Edit: Another reread, finished 5/6/2026, 2 years after the words below.
____________
"What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops." ~Jesus (Matthew 10:27 NASB)
It's been at least two years since I last did a slow read-through of my book. Life has changed - and I've changed - so much since it came out four years ago this month. But every page of this remains the prologue of every single prayer and praise since then. All the ways Jesus has already met me both on and off the road, that remains the reason for the trust and hope within me.
"What's past is prologue," as the saying goes. It's wild to see the first 85-90% of your life as prologue but, from the vantage point of my 50s, I suspect that happens more often than you'd think.
This life with Jesus is so worth the fight, worth hanging in there, worth the sleepless nights, worth the process, worth the long road and hard questions.
I hope some of these pages offer a little language for those stretches of road, those nights, those quiet places of your own.
"This is for fellow members of the
Long Road and Hard Answers Club.
For daughters and sons living in exile
and longing to come home,
For anyone who has reached the
clearing and is listening.
For anyone whose ear is pressed
against the wall of faith.
You are loved, and you're not alone."
____________
"What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops." ~Jesus (Matthew 10:27 NASB)
It's been at least two years since I last did a slow read-through of my book. Life has changed - and I've changed - so much since it came out four years ago this month. But every page of this remains the prologue of every single prayer and praise since then. All the ways Jesus has already met me both on and off the road, that remains the reason for the trust and hope within me.
"What's past is prologue," as the saying goes. It's wild to see the first 85-90% of your life as prologue but, from the vantage point of my 50s, I suspect that happens more often than you'd think.
This life with Jesus is so worth the fight, worth hanging in there, worth the sleepless nights, worth the process, worth the long road and hard questions.
I hope some of these pages offer a little language for those stretches of road, those nights, those quiet places of your own.
"This is for fellow members of the
Long Road and Hard Answers Club.
For daughters and sons living in exile
and longing to come home,
For anyone who has reached the
clearing and is listening.
For anyone whose ear is pressed
against the wall of faith.
You are loved, and you're not alone."
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews