Sensing Lent 35: Garden

There's something about sitting in the garden which is quintessentially English. I'm a simple gardener - as long as the lawn is mown and there's a few flowers in a small bed, easy to keep, preferably perennials which come up every year with no input from me; some herbs in pots, a couple of chairs, some shade, and I'm happy. 

I tend to have an 'out of sight out of mind' approach to gardening - when I'm not in the garden I never think about it - but when the sun comes out and I start wandering about out there, I notice things which need weeding, sweeping, cutting, re-potting, digging; and then I'm more likely to begin to get my hands dirty. There's something very grounding about getting your hands in the earth. It relieves the thoughts and settles the mind. At some basic level I suppose we know we're going back there one day.

The original garden (of Eden) can be read as a metaphor for our primary innocence - Adam and Eve tilled the soil in which were all kinds of plants for food and delight. A river flowed through the centre to water it. In the middle of the garden were two trees - the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They were allowed to eat of any tree except this one, a command which they ignored, thus losing their innocence. As Joni Mitchell sang, we've 'got to get ourselves back to the garden'.

As those who prize knowledge it's easy for us to read the story as God trying to keep Adam and Eve in the dark. But if knowledge is experiential, their disobedience would mean they 'knew' evil for the first time on eating 'the apple', and that was not going to end well. All we can say is that in acting as though God's way were sub standard, they forfeited some sort of life which would have been untouched by death and decay, something we naturally find hard to imagine. The door was now open to someone hanging on another tree to win back life.

As Holy Week starts, we make preparations to look to that someone who hung on a tree for us, and to walk the way of the cross, in order to get back to the garden.

Sensing Lent 4: Earth

Despite the spring sunshine on day 4 of Lent beckoning me outside, I still felt the iNtuitive temptation of a new book that just arrived through the post.

But no. Out I went to feel, the warm sun, taste outdoor coffee, touch worms, look at the yellow daffodils and smell the mint growing again in the patio pot, and the cat poo unearthed in the garage.

Being outdoors is healing. Dirty fingernails, walking on the springy moss (we don't have lawn, just moss) and noticing the rhubarb has suddenly sprouted again lifts the spirits in a way no amount of abstract thinking can do, even with a new book sitting unread.

I was perturbed by Giles Fraser's article in the Guardian today...
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2014/mar/07/secular-lent-pale-imitation-real-thing (NB: Very fruity language alert in the first line, if you're sensitive to these things).

...as I realised that 'self growth', akin to what I am attempting this Lent, is not at all the same as soul searching for sin. Have I become nothing more than a liberal delusional, thinking that psychological development of my underused Myers Briggs side is a worthy task for the penitential season?

Interesting, that intersection of theology and psychology. Several times during training for the C of E I wondered if what was going on in the personal realm had a theological or a psychological explanation. For example, the temptation to harbour attitudes that are unwise and unhealthy, those little dark areas within that remain stubbornly un-healed - is that the devil or some area of human development you still need to go through? My evangelical friends would say the former, my liberal ones the latter.

In a stand against dualism I came to feel that both were

right. So whilst somewhat sharing Giles Fraser's queasy feeling about what he sees as doomed attempts at human betterment, I still think 'know thyself' is a good starting point for Lent.