The Garden

Once I was standing in front of the White House. I was in Washington to give a speech and it had gone well. It was almost dusk and Julie and I stood there pondering the sights, the power of the place, the city cut in half --- the poorest of the poor living in front of the mightiest of the mighty. It is a place the can inspire and make you sick at the same time.

“What would you do if you were President?” she quietly asked.

At the time I was staring at the lawn and said the first thing that came to mind.

“I’d probably be out here picking crab grass.”

She laughed and said “The world would be a better place if President’s came out and did that every evening.”

At that time I would come home from work, run five miles to release the stress of work, then spend an hour or so tending plants that I’d planted and pulling crab grass of the yard. I was into it and in time at all the yard, deck and flower gardens that I’d planted made the place more beautiful. Tension was gone. I was proud. And the vibes of the living plants all around me birth good karma and it was hard not to admire the beauty of it all.

Then I’m not sure when but several years ago a tipping point was tipped. Work, tension and other problems overcame the gardening. My plants died. Crab grass grew in clumps around the yard. Weeds came. Beauty faded.

And something inside of me died too.

Sadness grew around the house. My marriage ended. Work became frustrating and difficult. Life became hard.

In the middle of all of this last year I went to Home Depot and bought a lot of stuff and for the first time in years planted flowers. I called them my “Promise Flowers” because they signified better things were coming. It wasn’t much but it was a step in the right direction.

A couple of month’s ago, I was feeling better. I’d been traveling across the country working to help people and their organization do things better. The better-ness rubbed off on me and new plans had been made and started to fertilize. New offers and opportunities came my way. The joy of friends, music, and love sustained me though the bad stuff.

One day sitting on the Beloved Back Deck, I was talking to my Mom describing what I wanted to do in the back yard. For years I’d intended to turn it into a funky garden that reflected things I love. Now my mother is a gardener on steroids. The next day she shows up with supplies and work began. Somehow I became a sub-contractor in my own garden.

Today Goddess and I took a run and then we were watering the flowers. Goddess is a dog who thinks she’s a person so she helps me with lots of things. There were these trees that Mom had left to be planted so without thinking much I planted them. Goddess ran around the yard. Choirs of birds sang. The sun shone. And it felt … satisfying.

Back when I was at the Jefferson Street Baptist Chapel employed as a Professional Christian (getting paid to do what I asked others to do for free) we were forever going outside of the Hymn Book for inspiration. A favorite was a Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie song. We’d sing it in Sunday Service instead of those “sad old sisters of Salvation singing Nearer My God to thee” songs.

“Grain for grain, sun and rain, find my way in nature’s chain, tune my body and my brain to the music of the land.”

I haven’t thought of it in years and years but today with Goddess running around the yard, dirt on my knees, the sun on my back, the song was raised from the dead and I found myself singing as I worked. Afterwards, watering the newly planted tree, I stepped back.

“Damn,” I said out loud to Fran’s thousand shades, to all of the growing things around me, to Goddess and myself and God, “I feel good.”