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GOD IN THE GARDEN
"A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot". Words of a deservedly forgotten Victorian poet, Thomas Brown. 'Wot' means 'knows' (like 'wit' meaning 'understanding'). Well of course it's a lovesome thing. Most of the population worships gardens and gardening, if not (overtly) God. We go to garden centres in droves.
We tend our plots. Or, in my case, not!
An Irish guest at the Black Swan said to me, in admiration, last May,
"I like your wild garden" (this in a strong Ulster accent) "it's lovely
to see everything so natural". After the snowdrops and violets growing in the 'lawn', there are the daffodils and bluebells, and recently the cowslips and columbines (relics of a former flowerbed). So I don't mow the 'lawn' till May.
This year, with all the rain, the grass is at least two feet tall. So I've bought a strimmer.
I thought of hiring a goat or a few sheep, but I feared they'd get out and savage other peoples' gardens, cause road accidents, molest the children going to school and terrorise the dogs on the Glebe. A strimmer is easier, if less fun, though you can't make goats' cheese with it.
Clearly my idle approach to 'not gardening' (no connection with 'knot gardens' as at Hatfield House) is quite the opposite of proper gardening, as seen in garden centres. But while others worship their tidy lawns, and shrubs and bedding plants - not to say garden furniture or (heaven forbid) garden gnomes - I think I can see God in this wild garden of mine. Certainly it's in a state of primal innocence!
Our very earliest story, in the second chapter of Genesis, finds God planting a garden, or Paradise. It (Paradise) is a Persian word, meaning a walled hunting park-literally, its surrounding wall (so my goats and sheep can't get out). What God planned for his latest creation, Adam and Eve, was a very protected and enclosed environment.
Now, closed systems are, actually, doomed to decay, unless they interact with the world outside. In Genesis the world outside appears as the serpent, a corrupting force. But, with deepest respect to the ancient Jews, I think they got their myth wrong. The serpent was only doing his job. There are parallels in Physics and Biology. Things only work if they interact with other things, otherwise they decay. You can't keep on breathing the same air, because it gets stale and you stifle. You can't be self-centred all the time: you have to be open to other people, or you stifle morally, and die in spirit. But turning outwards, away from self (technically 'negative entropy') is, very simply, 'love', "Love your neighbour as yourself'.
So, very bizarrely, the image of the enclosed garden (Paradise) is actually not a very appropriate one for the place where God (who is Love) is!
But, for those of us who visit gardens, the protected environment is a lovely place of rest. I've been to two recently. One in Seville (see my contributions to the April and June parish papers), the gardens of the Alcazar Palace, where the eternal flowing fountain chatters still, where the ripple of falling water weaves a subtle counterpoint with the lovesong of the gentle doves, and the irises unfold their petals to the reviving sun, surrounded by tall trees, protecting this ecstatic place. The other was in Ireland near Glengariff, a place called llnacullin, on Garnish island in Bantry Bay. The garden is protected from the Atlantic gales by conifers. Trees and shrubs from the Himalayas and New Zealand delight the eye. But best of all is a formal pool, with a paved surround, between an ltalianate summer house (the Casetta) and a freestanding arch, roofed to echo the Casetta. Through the arch you see the mountains beyond and the sky and the changing cloudscape - a vision into another world - and the reflection of this in the pool perfectly completes the image. Tennyson had a take on this in
his poem Ulysses, which is about moving on after personal loss and grief:
"I am a part of all that I have met
And all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margins fade For ever and for ever as I move"
For me, these are visions of Paradise. .
William Marsterson. June 2006
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