ON LOVE AND GARDENING

ON GARDENING:

The perfect day for gardening. Overhead, the sky a hopeful mix of blue with thin, wispy white clouds. The sun absolutely brilliant, brushing the earth in soft shades of gold. The elements of Earth and Air cool and moist from yesterday’s soft rain. I garden because I’m a thinker, because I find in nature so many of life’s answers because in a world where nothing seems sacred anymore, I can find the Sacred, feel the Sacred, when I lower my hands into the Earth; because I believe that touching the Earth is like touching God.

At the side of my home an area that I have studied for quite some time. A good place for showy hydrangeas, weed-killing hostas, perhaps a bed of tulips for tomorrow’s spring, certainly a good place for my clematis. But first, the hard work of turning the soil and pulling up weeds; disturbing what has been a winter home for thousands of earthworms and ants and bugs and beetles of all kinds. First, the pulling away of fall’s leaves so that what is there—two hardy azaleas—can breathe. I’m amazed at how resistant the weeds are to my pulling. Their roots tunnel so very deep that I must reach for the big guns—shovels, trowels, and hoes. But even they cannot get to the heart of some of these weeds, for their stems are further than I can even see. Careful manipulation is what it takes to remove them and keep them from coming back. But even then the work is not done—there is always the threat of weeds.

Here we are, so much like the flower bed. So able, so capable of making things grow. Here we are so fertile, so ripe, so full of possibilityand yet choked by so many weeds. The weeds of hatred, malice, racism, sexism. The weeds of doubt, self-loathing, worry, and fear. We try to plant around it, denying that the weeds are there, only to find much later that what we’ve planted is choking to death from the weeds that surround it. We get married, have children, work, and try to build lives around so much psychological baggage only to ask much later, when the marriage has ended in divorce, the children have gone astray, the job is unfulfilling---why? and what have I done wrong? We try to plant around it, try to fill in the spaces with beautiful showy plants and arrangements that, from a distance, look perfect and beautiful. But closer examination reveals aha! there they are: the weeds.
We fill our lives with material things and all the trappings of what most consider modern day success only to come home to the same emptiness that’s always been there, the same feelings of ineptitude, the same harried uneasiness that keeps us in a perpetual state of worry and doubt and comparison to where we are in relation to the Joneses, who themselves aren't even fulfilled. We pursue all outward measures without doing the necessary work within; without first preparing the interior ground. Here we are, the lot of us in America, struggling to breathe.


ON LOVE


Tufts of emerald green grass and billowy white clouds have me thinking about love. Talk of hydrangeas and cyclamen and fire orange tiger lilies have me deep in the real of love. Because for all that we want it to be, and for all that it is not, the truth remains that love just is. Sweet air so crisp, so fresh, has me bathing in the depths of loving and being loved and having been loved and having made love and having had love made to me and with me in so many different ways that are not even sexual.

Two weeks ago my son looked at me with big brown eyes that were as full and as watery as the moon, and said, in his classic four year old voice, “Mommy, you’re my woman.”

And I asked, “What did you say?” not sure I had heard right.

He smiled, held out his arms to me and repeated, “You’re my woman. You’re a good woman, Mommy.”

It felt as if the sun had tipped over and poured all of its warmth into me. I don’t recall ever feeling that way before.

Let me say from the outset that his expression was unprovoked. He was simply simply sitting at the table eating a chicken salad sandwich (not exactly his favorite) having one of what I call his “contemplative moments.” We are so much alike. He hadn’t asked for anything--no candy, no treats, no toys. We were just sitting there, having our ordinary after-nursery-school lunch time together. We were simply being—and that’s what made it so beautiful. The purest love I've ever received has been from my "love-to-cuddle-up together" children. Especially my son.

I’m amazed at how effortless it is to children to love with their whole hearts. I’m amazed at how little they question; how much they give and how little, in most cases, they really receive. I’m amazed at how pure their love really is, how simple their love really is, how uncomplicated their love really is, and how whole, how deeply whole they are before Life creeps in.

For a long time, I must admit, I have been afraid to love with my whole heart this way. I cringe at the thought of losing either of my children and I pray away the thoughts of burying my Spouse, whom I believe is my very best friend. It’s as if I’m afraid of loving too much, for fear of losing love altogether. My girlfriends are like diamonds to me. The bulk of them much older than I, have taught me courage, strenth, persistence and the real meaning of friendship. I love them so very much and yet I am afraid of loving anyone or anything as much as I do.

But what I have come to realize is that the answer doesn’t lie in learning how to protect ourselves from life and love, rather, the answer lies in learning how to become strong enough to let a little more of it in. True, we are all afraid of love and its hold on us, but I do believe that rather than seeking more love, rather than looking for more love to consume, rather than retreating from love, ours ought to be to learn how to BE love, to become love, so that it grows from us and through us in no short supply. And while we tend to think in our minimalist way that love gone is love lost, I have come to realize that love always takes the long road home.

Who of us can stand to be starved of love? Who of us can afford to entrap it, bar it within a cage like a trapped animal? I have come to understand that the very love we withhold from another is the selfsame love we take from our own mouths.

Somehow, we must work our way toward a state of Agape, that is, as novelist and essayist Charles Johnson defines: “the ability to unconditionally love something not for what it currently is, (for at a moment it might be quite unlovable) but instead for what it could become, a teleological love that recognizes everything as process, not product, and sees beneath the surface to a thing’s potential for positive change.” (The King We Need: Teachings for a Nation in Search of Itself – Shambhala Sun, Jan 2005).

When I think of the work of our greatest social reformists, those committed to working for justice and for peace (I’m thinking specifically of Mahatma Ghandi right now), I realize that those who had the most far-reaching effect were the ones who had a deeper understanding of love. This is what I believe led Dr. Martin Luther King Jr to one of the greatest original thinkers of our time: Mahatma Ghandi. Ghandi’s politics were rooted in a love ethic—an agape-style love ethic that recognized the absolute tragedy of hatred. Ghandi’s politics were rooted in the absolute courage of love. King said of agape love that it is “more than romantic love, it is more than friendship. Agape is understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill toward all [beings]. Agape is an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return.” (A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King).

Love just is.

Love just is.

Love is.

Love is, I believe, the one thing that could heal this world; love makes peace real.

I’m thinking right now of a quote by Leo Tolstoy from War and Peace:

“Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love.”

In love and in peace,


ANGEL