Salvation for My Community

We walked, listening for the health of the plants and trees and crops about us. Was that bush filled with as many butterflies as needed? Were the trees filled with as many warbling birds as needed? Both birds and butterflies were critical, we knew, to the carrying of pollen among the fruit trees so there would be abundant cherry crops, so that there would be a goodly amount of pears and plums and peaches to be put up for winter.

As we walked, Uncle mused, "I have heard people ask, 'Where is the garden of Eden?' Ha! Anywhere we stand on this earth, we are standing right in the garden of Eden. This entire earth, underneath its rail tracks and highways, under its worn coat, under its rubble, under all these, is God's garden - still as fresh as the day it was created.

"It is true that in many places Eden is covered over and forgotten. But she can be made whole again. Wherever there is worn ground, misused or unused ground, Eden is still right beneath.

"But we would not gouge the earth back to life, nor try to bring Eden about in great shovelfuls. No, no. No matter how large the garden - one cubit by one, or huge fields you cannot see the end to - if you are directly planting, you do so by patting and patting the earth, taking little handfuls of it up. Be gentle, be economical. Do not take immense shovelfuls to get the job done faster. Like the pouring of milk into flour, you do not dump it all in at once. No, gently you pour a little, stir a little, pour a little more, stir a little more, and this is also how to treat the land, thoughtfully, with presence of mind."

This is how I learned that this land, which we depended upon for our food, our livelihoods, our rest, for opportunity to meet beauty, ought to be treated in the same manner that we would hope to treat others and ourselves. Whatever happens to this field in some way also happens to us."

from Why We Garden by Jim Nollman

How else might we re-vision a sacred relationship to the Earth from out of the center of a profane culture? I would suggest that an enhanced sense of place offers a very clear path leading toward a reinvestiture of the sacred in our lives. And the garden, the sacred garden, is what we already have at our disposal to rebuild this ancient path. The environmental crisis is a crisis in perception. A sacred perception of the garden might lead to new insights about cities, suburbs, and farms - all the places human beings actually dwell. It is one essential tool in remolding culture to embrace the sacred on a daily basis."

Karen Nicholson told of walking along our Nature Trail early one morning. She came upon a common garden snake sunning itself. It slipped into the underbrush at her approach, but then she saw baby rabbits and butterflies.

Down at the end of the trail the shrubs at the top of the slope and the tree canopy hide the parking lot only a few feet away, giving an impression of solitude and serenity in the midst of abundant life.

Ed Gersabeck developed there a network of paths to explore and beds of flowers. Someone said, "Back where nobody goes." Oh, no. There are those who value this secret garden. It isn't made to impress someone looking for a building to rent for a wedding. It is for fox, woodchuck, bat, and chipmonk. It is for the nursery school's fair weather hikes. It is for us when we are in need of spiritual sustenance. We come away refreshed, reconnected to the natural world, thankful for that sacred place.

One might glance at the garden while looking for a parking space and possibly notice that the trees are coming into leaf and little more. If the daylilies in Mary Amato's garden are in full bloom, one might be conscious of a lovely expanse of color. But such cursory attention misses an experience more satisfying than the most expensive entertainment downtown. No mall with all its temptations to buy or amusement park with the biggest artificial Europe or fake fairyland can compare with what we can enjoy free when we immerse ourselves in the life of our own bit of earth.

As I walk through our gardens my mind empties of the day's business, the stresses of life recede and I am filled instead with the beauty of growing things. I am occupied with seeing how a newly transplanted peony is showing new buds, the increase in the population of grape hyacinths, how well the tulips have survived the winter. Has the witchhazel finished its winter bloom? Did the red honeysuckle planted in the fall survive? In spring the pale green soft carpet of sweet woodruff is sprinkled with stars like a faint fall of snow.

I identify with the rest of nature. It is not an I-Thou relationship. We are both expressions of the same holy spirit that permeates all existence. Gardening helps to dispel the illusion of separateness. Loving one special place teaches us to love the universe and all that's in it. The digging, touching, planting, watering and weeding grows more than plants. It also grows an intimate connection. Gardening is an erotic experience, less intense but of greater duration than the one associated with human reproduction.

It may be unreasonable to say that plants have feelings as we do, but they are not entirely passive. I am reminded of an orchid I borrowed from Chris Lihou. It bowed under the weight of 25 large blooms. As I sat beside it reading, every once in a while it would send a breath of perfume over me like a blown kiss. It was not that the flowers smelled in the sense that the kitchen smells when you are cooking something. This was episodic. The orchid shared its lovely fragrance at unexpected moments so that my sense of smell did not become numb from constant exposure.

Plants respond to our care, they do better when we tend them. On the other hand they were created before we came into the picture and some at least could manage without us. We would not get along as well without them. They lift our spirits, they fill our hearts, they take us out of ourselves. They have a positive effect on our health and longevity as we do on theirs.

In order to feel kinship with the Earth we need first to feel kinship with a small part of it, a personal place which we know profoundly, which gives us a particular appreciation of the turning of the seasons, the influence of soil upon plant and plant upon wildlife, the place of water in this scheme, the varying requirements for sunlight or shade. Tending a small garden plot forces us to slow down, to live at a different pace. A seed germinates in its own time, the daffodil blooms when it is ready. The toad peering out from the shelter of liriope is an ally in maintaining the garden. We enlarge our acquaintance among living things. The perfume of the wintersweet in February helps us to be patient while the crocus prepares itself for spring.

As I was going through the inventory of plants in our gardens I was struck by the number given in memory of or in honor of various individuals. It brought to mind thoughts of old friends and caused me to reflect upon the ties that bind us as a community and keep us connected to the past.

Planting a tree as a memorial ties us to the past, of course, but to the future as well. We may now tend daylilies and sunflowers under the sapling, but we can imagine our children, or someone else's, inspired by wood hyacinth and trillium in profusion in the cool shade of the spreading tree years hence. We will have helped make that pleasure possible for them. It is the tree which will have transformed the ecology of the place, but by planting it, we will have had a tangible influence on the future. Focusing on this place and our responsibility to see that growing conditions foster the health of this particular tree leads us to consider the whole ecosystem including, but not limited to humanity. It induces a change of perspective.

Joanne Alexander reports that the largest silver maple in the country is just a couple of blocks from this building. It was here before any of us were born and may well be here after we are all gone. There is something about being in the presence of a large tree that inspires awe. The tree speaks to our hearts if we will listen.

There are those who discount the intuitive, but this leads us to treat the natural world as an object entirely apart from ourselves, there for us to use and to control. This is at least partly responsible for the ecological crisis in which we find ourselves today.

Human beings have so altered the face of the earth that it can never be restored to the status of whatever period in geologic time we might choose as its 'natural state'. Therefore our task is to learn to manage the present mix of plants which have found their homes here. We need to restrain those which would overrun the rest and encourage plants which will enhance the environment for the general health of the ecosystem and for our personal spiritual health.

There are 70 million households in the US where gardening is practiced regularly. The Earth needs more and more of us to acquire this intimacy with her so that we can heal her little by little. As our numbers grow they will inevitably change public policy and practice. Such changes are already occurring. The idea that humans are not the center of creation but that the whole biosphere is interdependent is being absorbed by more and more people.

Many of us do not have a patch of ground at home to cultivate, but there is space here on this property for many more potential gardeners. The landscaping committee supplies the tools, soil amendments, and even plants. These gardens have reached the point where many plants are ready for dividing. Both shade loving and sun loving plants are here in abundance. If you don't know the first thing about gardening some of us will be more than happy to help you get started.

Our children have taken advantage of this opportunity. Thirty years ago they cared for the seedlings which are now the tall row of evergreens along New Hampshire Ave. In recent years our five and six year olds planted most of the blue spruce along the east border of the parking lot, many colonies of crocus, and the new spring camellia in Beverly and Janet's garden.

In 1996 the Coming of Age class gave us our winter camellia and cultivated an area of sod which is now Nonie Barker's garden just outside the window wall opposite the entrance of this building. The Coming of Age class of 1997 gave us the yellow azalea 'Peachy Keen' next to the picnic table in Renata Trumbull's garden. Last year their successors built and installed a large bat house. This month the Coming of Age class will plant vines on the gazebo, Ellen Dashner's proposed use for the frame of the old pulpit, and make a stepping stone path leading up to it.

I will end with a quotation from A Garden Story by Leon Whiteson (this is a man who had no interest in gardening until he bought a house and felt very reluctantly obliged to care for the property around it):

"In these ways my garden has made me even as I've made it. It has connected my head with my hands and rooted both sensibilities in a shared ground, cultivating a quietness I never knew could flourish in the agitated soil of my temperament. Making my garden has taught me that delight and despair move through the seasons of one's life in a constant round of renewal.

Yes, this garden is my own true Paradise, carrying a personal echo of Eden as Adam experienced it on the sixth day of Creation, when God gave him the power to name every living thing on the newly-made planet called Earth. It has the form of that imagined Eve who comes toward me now, naked in the morning air. Her flesh gives off a female heat, drawn from the sunshine filtering through the leafy canopy above, and the smell of her warm body nourishes my heart."

Amen and shalom

Closing Words

""What is this faithful process of spirit and seed that touches empty ground and makes it rich again? Its greater workings I cannot claim to understand. I only know that in its care, what has seemed dead is dead no longer, what has seemed lost, is no longer lost, that which some have claimed impossible, is made clearly possible, and what ground is fallow is only resting - resting and waiting for the blessed seed to arrive on the wind with all Godspeed.

And it will."

The Faithful Gardener by Clarissa Pinkola Estes