When considering the title of this blog, as I was walking the dogs, it occurred to me how similar are gardening and adoration: both are rooted in the stupendous surprise of awe... or as Brother David Steindl-Rast has written, "That you have not yet died is not sufficient proof that you're alive"! Awe is the -- not in the least bit subtle realization -- that one lives upon a Planet and within a Universe in which life is given... Isn't that one humongous holy moly?
Proof of life is immediately evident as one works to build soil. Years ago while living in California, Michelle and I were residing in a house that gave us the opportunity to garden. However, the "soil" was compacted clay which held virtually no life. Year-by-year we layered given lawn clippings and gathered leaves to turn into the clay: worms showed up to help us. Bad-soil tolerant plants worked their roots down some inches... and after but a few years, we had a topsoil of a few inches, and we kept working it so that, by the time we moved to the Midwest, we had left behind a garden area with a good rich six to eight inches of rich, dark, topsoil...
Our gardening experience here in River Falls has been much like it was in California -- excepting sand for clay. Lawn clippings and leaves! Luckily for us, River Falls has a community compost site with a help-yourself to unlimited access to clippings, leaves, and sawdust or ground wood from fallen branches or trees. And so the soil building continues... But how magnificent it is to see tomatoes on the vine and just pull them off and eat your fill before strolling with the dogs!
Contrary to those folks who seem to think that everything is for sale, the opposite is precisely how both nature and community actually work. Concepts such as the common good invite each of us to recognize the reality of our interdependence: and it's 'given' nature. While it is true, on one level, that the "strong survive", it is even more true, as philosopher Peter Kropotkin pointed out, that evolution favors those species that organize in favor of mutual aid. This essential gifting requires our recognition and humble awe...
Awe is the access point to the Divine Consciousness. Or, in other words, without awe, all that remains in life is for sale! and theologies become marketing plans and justifications: technique becomes the "replacement part" for mystic. The mystique of life, which is supposed to provoke adoration, is overruled by the constructed systems of power, profit, and privilege. Unless you decide, from the vantage point of your own life, to choose otherwise!
"OtherWise" is the rEvolutionary choice to bend your knee before nature, and to garden: to grow both food and beauty, in imitation of, well, nature... "OtherWise" is likewise the rEvolutionary choice to also bend your knee before the audacious possibility that the burgeoning Universe self-organized into Awareness Consciousness: call It divine, beloved, mystery, source, or God... Both gardening and adoration are tools for the mystic to cultivate awe in the face of the stupendous gift of life...
However you can access soil, and get your hands and feet into It, do it! And surely, wherever you find yourself at this moment of your life, you can, even for just a moment of a few breaths, rest in awe, and in this resting, allow It to be done unto you... And at some following point, it is enough to simply say "I thank you" and "I love you"... Now you are a mystic... and for the rest of the days that you are given, just remember...
Proof of life is immediately evident as one works to build soil. Years ago while living in California, Michelle and I were residing in a house that gave us the opportunity to garden. However, the "soil" was compacted clay which held virtually no life. Year-by-year we layered given lawn clippings and gathered leaves to turn into the clay: worms showed up to help us. Bad-soil tolerant plants worked their roots down some inches... and after but a few years, we had a topsoil of a few inches, and we kept working it so that, by the time we moved to the Midwest, we had left behind a garden area with a good rich six to eight inches of rich, dark, topsoil...
Our gardening experience here in River Falls has been much like it was in California -- excepting sand for clay. Lawn clippings and leaves! Luckily for us, River Falls has a community compost site with a help-yourself to unlimited access to clippings, leaves, and sawdust or ground wood from fallen branches or trees. And so the soil building continues... But how magnificent it is to see tomatoes on the vine and just pull them off and eat your fill before strolling with the dogs!
Contrary to those folks who seem to think that everything is for sale, the opposite is precisely how both nature and community actually work. Concepts such as the common good invite each of us to recognize the reality of our interdependence: and it's 'given' nature. While it is true, on one level, that the "strong survive", it is even more true, as philosopher Peter Kropotkin pointed out, that evolution favors those species that organize in favor of mutual aid. This essential gifting requires our recognition and humble awe...
Awe is the access point to the Divine Consciousness. Or, in other words, without awe, all that remains in life is for sale! and theologies become marketing plans and justifications: technique becomes the "replacement part" for mystic. The mystique of life, which is supposed to provoke adoration, is overruled by the constructed systems of power, profit, and privilege. Unless you decide, from the vantage point of your own life, to choose otherwise!
"OtherWise" is the rEvolutionary choice to bend your knee before nature, and to garden: to grow both food and beauty, in imitation of, well, nature... "OtherWise" is likewise the rEvolutionary choice to also bend your knee before the audacious possibility that the burgeoning Universe self-organized into Awareness Consciousness: call It divine, beloved, mystery, source, or God... Both gardening and adoration are tools for the mystic to cultivate awe in the face of the stupendous gift of life...
However you can access soil, and get your hands and feet into It, do it! And surely, wherever you find yourself at this moment of your life, you can, even for just a moment of a few breaths, rest in awe, and in this resting, allow It to be done unto you... And at some following point, it is enough to simply say "I thank you" and "I love you"... Now you are a mystic... and for the rest of the days that you are given, just remember...
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