“I sometimes wonder if all other animals, all plants, maybe even stars and rivers and rocks, dwell in steady awareness of God, while humans alone, afflicted with self-consciousness, imagine ourselves apart.” ~Scott Russell Sanders, A Private History of Awe
I am cultivating a heart inspired to connect with the earth around me. Once upon a time, I aspired to be a gardener. I planted raised beds of tomatoes and herbs when I lived on the island of Ocracoke in North Carolina. Then I watched those beds drown under the flood waters of a late summer hurricane. In my third floor apartment in Providence, Rhode Island, again I planted pots of tomatoes, herbs, lettuce. These lived on the roof of my second floor neighbor’s balcony. I’d crawl out a bedroom window and balance myself on this roof to tend the plants. When it came time to move into an upper level town home with a stern management company, once again I bid my plants farewell.
Living in West Virginia, with a proper plot of land, I thought it was finally my chance. Yet, long hours working, pregnancy, raising children, other pursuits, took me away from this dream.
Gardening has been set aside over and again. And while I’ve wanted to pick it up, the task has felt daunting. It still does. Gardening begins with mess and death and requires so much sweat and trust, that I have found myself uttering one excuse after another.
Yet, I find myself longing again for the touch of dirt and the hope of buried seed; longing for the garden’s promise I read from writer Christie Purifoy—the growth of roots, connection, wholeness, and hope. Don’t I, don’t we all, need these qualities?
I know it to be true: gardens do indeed cultivate roots, connection, wholeness, and hope. Isn’t this what I experienced in the vulnerable community in which Glenwood Life Addiction Clinic resides in Baltimore, Maryland? Indeed, there was wild, messy, death. Foreign work. Sweat and trust. And in that trust, rose new life, hope resurrected for those humans in recovery and those humans living in the neighborhood. There was a message of connection conveyed: this land and all you on it are worthy and good.
So, I look at my own mess and wonder, might I find wholeness and connection, roots and hope here? Might the land and I know our worth together? Might the garden also be the place I dwell in a steady awareness of connection to all that is divine?
Ancient texts that contemplate humans’ relationship to God and one another all reveal a similar message. One that the rest of creation aside from humans perhaps already know, as writer Scott Russell Sanders imagines. Reading one of the most well-known of the Upanishads, the Munduka Upanishad, it is written, “Bright but hidden, the Self dwells in the heart. Everything that moves, breathes, opens, and closes lives in the Self…The shining Self dwells hidden in the heart. Everything in the cosmos, great and small, lives in the Self.”
In this message I remember that the presence of God, the presence of hope and connection, dwells in me as it dwells in the flowers of the garden; dwells in the flowers as it dwells in the dirt and seed that is not yet flowers; dwells in the sound of the birds as it does in the voices of my teenagers; dwells in the open arms of the cherry tree just as it dwells behind the closed doors of my neighbor.
I began reading the wonderful new book by Christie Purifoy, the third in her gardening trilogy, Seedtime and Harvest, this past week. It’s a gorgeous book with pictures, wisdom, tips, and writing that reads not like a manual but like a story of rebirth and resurrection within a world of beauty and hope and deep roots. She writes, “Gardening is no mere hobby…Gardening is a way of life, and as a way of life, it can cure so much that ails us. After all, our world is on intimate terms with estrangement. We can each tell stories of fractured friendships, neighborly disputes, even nations at war. Endangered species lists…and even that new parking lot where a meadow once grew remind us of the enmity that seems to taint our human relationships with the natural world…But with so much around us out of tune, we gardeners also testify to regular wonders.”
And this is the magic of connection with the natural world that I watched grow in Baltimore and in my heart. With so much out of tune, there is still regular wonder. Purifoy speaks in her most recent podcast episode (found here) of the practice of observing the “pattern of countless ways that God uses material things to reach out to us.”
So the pattern that is blooming from my cherry tree and the pattern that blooms as laughter between a friend and me. It’s all an opportunity to behold the “shining Self [that]dwells hidden in the heart,” a presence that dwells in everything that has breath and life. If only our self-conscious human mind might slow its steady diatribe for a moment to realize we are not at all separate. We are part of the very same pattern of material things, countless ways to experience the presence of God surrounding us, like being held inside the container of a hug.
I’ve answered the call to Yoga, Sea, and Sun this October 13-19 in Chacala, Mexico. I couldn’t be more thrilled for the restoration, joy, and adventure this retreat holds in store. Currently on the early-bird pricing, you’ll save $300 through April 15th. Learn more and register here: Yoga, Sea, and Sun
Or are you imaging yourself in Italy? There’s still time and just 4 spaces open to join us this June 1-7. Learn more and register here: Viva La Vitta Massimo