thy
—Have I been here before?
The seeds that I planted inside this February all died by May and this is why I love gardening—
Human attempts to imitate nature often fall by the wayside as we are reminded of our small stature when it comes to the environment and our innate desire to cooperate within its natural laws. More than ever in a tech-driven hyper-digital world compounded by sociopolitical unrest, we need to enter into and create our Gardens of Eden of refreshment, peace and contemplation.
The last time I gardened in proximity to my smartphone, it ended up on emergency mode from overheating, organic compost embedded in its case and lying flat on it’s back smelling like horse manure. Tech lost—Nature won—We were created for Nature, it will exist with or without us. Social media is clear-cutting our once vast fields of family life and contemplation. We datafy religiously about our impact on the Globe without any reflection on our own metaphysical and spiritual health: the diagnosis? We suffer amnesia about our agrarian origins.
Garden of Original Freedom
We all have a memory buried deep inside of us of a Garden of Eden; from the Hebrew Ada’necha (Delight) and Paradise, derived from the pre-Persian language of Old Avestan (pairi-daeza) or walled garden—a sanctuary from the outside world that has been an ancient tradition. We encounter it whenever we find joy and delight (Eden) in something. Some call it a Holy memory, others a happy place. Apart from cultural/biblical accounts of Eden, Monastic life and the Greek’s mythological Golden Age where humanity lived free from toil and suckled abundantly from the bubbling springs of the earth—our relationship to nature has been anything but peaceful. Our ancestors toiled the soil of our earliest civilizations and reaped the blessings of abundance and good harvest as well as curses of floods, drought, plagues, disease and displacement. We have waged war over rights to soil and driven nations into exile over land.
The quest to establish the Rights of Man (Thomas Paine) on equal ground has been a perilous journey witnessed by the bloody and torched terrain of grassroots revolutions: the ‘landless against the landlord’ (Malcolm X) and he would argue that no revolution ever earned its name without bloodshed. Anyone who possessed land remained free (mostly free) while those who toiled in it remained captive by it without personal, political or economic freedom. From our Natural Rights (Locke) to Life, Liberty and Property—the enlightenment of Rousseau’s Social Contract balanced by Jeffersonian safeguards of Individualism, the movements of good conscience by men and women all contributed to the European anti-slavery movement. Those Natural rights that spring from the idea that “All men are born free” (French and American Declarations) draw their source from the Garden of Original Freedom. The question of the geographical precision of Eden and the four rivers that flowed from it is suspended by the more vital premise that they were intended to nourish everyone.
The indisputable sin of slavery as a result of the fallen nature of man by its very means, obtained for the slave a symbolic entry into the Garden of Eden through suffering—an involuntary toil and I would like to believe that all who found their lot in slavery had the one consolation of encountering the Messiah through direct contact with nature. Were they not the true kings and Queens of a Kingdom not bound by this physical world? Was the grace bestowed onto the enslaved proportionate to their suffering? Was the plough of mortification, a share in divine Mercy, as they would risk their lives and make passage into the night to hear the Gospel, their redemptive sermons of endurance a momentary escape into their inalienable Rite* to worship the Creator? “They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God”. (Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God, 1937)
The Art of Pruning: Personal Growth
Gardening, among its many rewards and joys can be precarious. Nature is a bet—so if you decide to create your own Garden of Eden, add to your tools patience and fearlessness: squirrels will take generous helpings of your tomatoes, your kids will accidentally ride their bike over your basil plant that was supposed to be transplanted, you might knock out a couple of plants after you realize you needed a lighter weight hose, your soil may not be as organic as “promised”, and your tomato plants will be ‘leggy’ the first couple of seasons. At the end of a blistering day you might find yourself at Home Depot grabbing miserable but stable enough seedlings to start your garden season asking yourself if you should even bother—keep going...
Tangibility of the Intangible
It took several years to know how to wield the shears and discover that the work of pruning was not only for my plants to thrive but a metaphor for personal growth and formation; cutting back those vices that overcrowd our authentic self and who we were created to be. Physical contact with nature quickens that process. Our rational mind can be just as inspired by our senses, the simple and primitive physical tasks of gardening can generate our intellect and contemplation is the portal to that divine Garden.
The first instinct is to think that pruning will curb growth, so the inexperienced gardener will be over inclusive and let every single sucker live. This will inhibit your plants and deplete your harvest. Seedlings need air flow and fenestration to allow the process of photosynthesis, so the more you cut back, the more abundant the fruit will be. Here is where the cultivator meets nature to collaborate in creation: our mutual determination in the force of life. We are physicians in the realm of the natural world and should apply our own Hippocratic oath to ‘do no harm’ making sure that when you do nip off a branch or suckling, it is a clean and intentional cut that will encourage growth rather than disease. Your bare hands and fingers can be nimble for surgery, if a suckling is a sprout, simply use a fingernail and press gently with your thumb to remove. As you mediate between your hands and pruners (shears) you learn to care for your plants in a familial way. Just as you would brush your hand over a child’s eyes to help them fall asleep, with that same caress, you can intuitively tend to your plants. Saint Francis of Assisi was known for his love of God’s creatures and in his integrated nature would be found walking down a path greeting the animals with Pax et Bonem (Peace and all Good).
Whenever we make contact with nature we are transported back to that Edenic idea of full integration with God and Nature. We can compare the relationship we have to nature in proximity to the body and soul connection. The soul is incomplete without the body and yet it will outlive the body after death (Aquinas) so we are incomplete without contact with nature even though we believe we can survive without it and just as the soul will outlive the body, nature will survive us. Gardening can be an antidote to the digital interruptions of social mediacracy**and the temptation to be seen. The joy of gardening gives us the permission to be happily forgotten and lost in the quiet peace of a Paradise Found in order to replenish the soul.
Sewing Social Seeds
The Eden that you create has a way of propagating good relationships, encounters with dog walkers, friends, neighbors, and those casual conversations: “what have you planted”? “I should start my own garden”, “I still remember how my grandmother would carry her pruners in her sun hat leaving a hole in her brim”, can extend into something meaningful that bonds us all to the memory of Nature. We are the first gardeners and the genesis of our friendship to the soil may be distant for some but always remains at the surface ready to be tilled and harvested. The peace that derives from physical labor and the sensory experience of working with earth from seed to fruit is an unparalleled (Ralph Waldo Emerson would wax poetic) act of worship.
Community Irrigation
It is evident with the increase in urban pop-up gardens and green spaces over the last 25 years that we intuitively thirst for natural environments. Food co-ops and garden associations have supplied much needed social ties with the community and local farmers. They have provided opportunities to teach future generations horticulture and more importantly where we get our food (it does not in fact come from the deep freezer in aisle 10). Kids love to watch things grow and their attention to detail can catch you by surprise, so their curiosity in Natural Science should always be nurtured. There are teaching moments for Science, Mathematics and Geometry in gardening and if they are adventurous: teach them the Fibonacci Sequence that is demonstrated in plant growth. Why not? They love to get their hands dirty with “good germs” and they build better immune systems in the process. The benefits of sunshine and fresh air are limitless as they learn responsibility and commitment from managing their own little vegetable patch. The physical activity keeps them healthy, strong and focused but the best reward is seeing their delight in picking their own basil and eating it on the spot or bringing it in for their dinner that day.
Delight in the First Fruits
Seeing the fruit of your labor—the joy of succeeding, as co-creator is the best medicine. Gardening became an extended shiva, Hebrew for stage of mourning (I could not find an English word for this) when my fiancé passed away. Only the physical work of preparing soil could pull me out of sorrow like those weeds that had settled in the ground for the winter. Tilling, pruning, gloves on, gloves off, wiping sweat from my face with my already soiled apron, at times just my forearm, bending, arching, pulling, and kneeling—All became a prayer. Sorrow and mourning eventually seeped into the ground and became a fertilizer for something greater: I had cultivated an interior peace that could handle the deepest pain and sadness. What is true about nature is its unchanging attributes, its permanence—healing, in contrast with human nature that is mercurial. Aristotle writes: “that which is by nature is unchangeable and has everywhere the same force, as fire burns both here and in Persia.”
Guardians of a common Eden
The lessons of interior peace that Nature offers are free. We are faced now with an essential choice to cultivate anew the Eden that nourishes us and bonds us as human beings or reap the consequences of a corporate-run inorganic society. We only need a glimpse of that Edenic paradise with a peripheral reality of imperfectability until that time when we will see “a new heaven and a new earth”. (Revelations 21:1)
In reality, few of us have green thumbs and not everyone has the luxury of maintaining a garden but we can redeem the time and dig deeper to keep a small stake in the ground of our busy lives even if it’s a simple flower box hanging over the balcony. There is no altar call to become luddites and abandon our great cities of innovation for a homestead in the Midwest (that is a good life too) and we will continue to advance with every technological break-through to live our lives to the fullest as long as we are mindful not to trample on those more tender seedlings of our human nature along the path to progress. From Aristotle to Malcolm X, we all draw from the same fountain and when we reacquaint ourselves with our roots we will find that everything is redemptive and hopes to be renewed between sundown into the early dew of the morning when nature is most awake. Are you?
***********************CODA******************
Footnotes
*rite: double meaning, Inalienable Right, Rite of Passage **Mediacracy; highly controlling, influential sphere of social media