Man has all too quickly reclaimed the garden, the natural chaos is trimmed back. It’s neat, it’s tidy. It’s now very sellable. But to me it has now lost its magic.
His neighbour’s house was being tidied up after the neighbour had died to make it sellable because no one really wants a wildlife garden, even though we talk about making our gardens wildlife friendly we do more often than not mean it in a domesticated way.
It reminded me of an interpretation of the story of the Selkie I’d just read. The woman wants this wild man she had met on the beach for her own and so hides the selkie’s skin which tames him. She then isn’t so keen on him once he is tamed.
It also made me think of the children I worked with in June who really enjoyed their creative writing session once they got their heads round the idea that I didn’t need neat and tidy but wanted something wild and creative.
How often do we spend ages tidying ourselves up, making ourselves presentable, sorting out our natural chaos so we are liked by the world? Because that was what was happening with this house here, with the woman and the Selkie, with the children and their story telling; all were making it presentable to the world.
Too often we get taught as children to “pipe down”, to “stop messing about”, to “behave ourselves”. And so we learn that being wild is not really acceptable. So we try to make ourselves “sellable” and in doing so we lose the magic – the magic of ourselves, the magic of how we see the world, the magic of just being alive.
Gary goes on to say
Some called it overgrown, most called it wonderful. To me it was like a magical corner from a chapter in The Secret Garden. A place that made me smile.
So why don’t we stop trying to tidy ourselves up for a world, enter that place of Freedom, and allow our natural chaos, our wild, magical selves out. And maybe create a smile for other people as they enjoy us being our true selves.
A random selection of photos taken by myself on my walks around my local area
This post today comes with a huge thank you to Lily Lewin and her post Discovering the Garden of Love By doing a couple of the prompts from here –
Think about walking into a garden filled with Love! What would that look like? What would that feel like to you? What would be growing in that garden just for you?
And reading through as Lily opens up about her boxes she had – of fear, of failure, of not enough, I was able to put aside all my anger and disappointment about the British government’s Migrant bill that was filling my head and heart.
I spent time imagining my garden filled with Love. There were of course abundant different coloured flowers and a babbling brook, and ponds with fish and waterboatmen and dragonflies, and meadows, and trees. But there were also people of all sorts of different shapes, sizes, colours, races, sexualities, genders, ages, walking the most gorgeous snaking footpaths, sitting on love seats and chatting, smiling, enjoying each other.
The mixture of nature and humanity lifted my heart this morning. This I believe is what heaven will be like. All fear and war and greed and “not enoughness” and disappointments, etc, will be gone. All peoples will be at peace with each other, will be enjoying each other, will love each other.
I found it interesting that I could not write about this Garden of Love without putting people in it. But I think that is because I asked God for their heart and God’s heart is people. Humanity was made as the pinnacle of God’s creation so why would there be a Garden of Love without people?
This does not mean that I won’t send emails with Freedom From Torture or Christian Solidarity Worldwide or Greenpeace or Friends of The Earth or the anti human trafficking group, Anit-Slavery, but I will do it in a way that does not hurt my heart, does not make me consumed with anger and wanting to fight someone. And you know what those emotions leave me tired and not able to calmly protest.
So when I feel that anger rising I will go and have a sit in my Garden of Love with all that beauty of nature and beauty of humankind.
Here’s some Bible verses to help us all remember –
34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” John 13:34-35
My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other. John 15:12-17
36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[a]38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b]40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:36-40
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor[d] and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, Matthew 5:43-44
18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 1 Corinthians 13:4-8
I finish with my garden back in July 2023. A riot of colour plus a local squirrel sampling from the bird feeder
Look closely by the hedge and you can see my drastically pruned rose bushes.
I was pruning my roses this morning and got thinking of how pruning roses is like healing. At first there is a bundle of vicious stems with dead flowers on the end, but as we work through them it is easier to see where to cut and also how to get the stems out without being hurt too much. But then every so often there, as the rose bush being comes more sparse, a thorn gets us without being prepared for it.
I was more careful with the bush that has loads of little spikes on it than the one with sparsely placed larger thorns. And yet it was the larger thorns that caused more damage to my hands then the little ones because I was not taking so much notice. Again I think a great analogy with healing. We can often be more careful with the issues we think are going to be painful and then get side-winded by the ones that we thought would be easy to deal with.
So I would say to anyone who is starting on the journey of dealing with their trauma, issues, hurts and pains, that to being with it will be hard, and you will get side-winded at times when you thought you could deal with this, but it does get easier as time goes on.
Also come the summer, because I have pruned now, I will have a lovely flowering of the most gorgeous roses. I am noticing as I do more QEC, both with my practitioner and on my own, the “flowers” that are blooming in my “garden” are so much better than the ones I had without the pruning.
Oh and another analogy – I didn’t plant the roses in my garden. They were planted by the previous occupiers, or even before them. Lots of the traumas and issues we have to deal with are not necessarily ones we planted but were planted by our parents, by their parents into their soil, by people who passed through our early lives, things that happened to us. But it is us that have to deal with them now so our garden grows more fully.
Aspirational Adventures 