"When we grow up, do you want to marry me. Check yes or no."
Moved by the powerful words and declarations of love and perhaps my penchant for "John Denver" shirts and smooth dutch boy haircut, she said yes. We made an appointment to kiss in the play log cabin during recess. Said kiss was intercepted by Mrs Loomis who had heard through the rumor mill of our engagement.
True love could not be stopped, however. On the way home from school I kissed her on the cheek and she kissed me on the cheek. Blushing was in abundance and love was in the air. It was that simple.
In time the engagement would be forgotten and we were too busy being kids to put the proper work into the relationship. There was never a formal breakup, we just were distracted by shiny objects. Hell, we drifted apart but there was no heartbreak and there was no drama or hurt.
The garden of love was fresh and innocent. The soil was ripe, the weeds were scarce, the young seedlings were in good soil and tended by gardeners known as parents. Love was easy. In our innocence was also an ignorance that helped preserve the innocence.
We grow up, though. We get lied to. We get hurt. The words love are used as tools to control, to own, to manipulate. Things are done to us in the name of love and we sometimes do things that are not loving and speak words of love.
As we grow and mature and our ignorance decreases, we become aware and the innocence is lost. We learn that gardens have weeds. We learn some flowers or plants do not thrive well too close to others. We learn that there are predators who will see the garden as a feast to devour and destroy. We learn there are negligent gardeners, or even worse, gardeners that fertilize other gardens while ignoring the very one they planted. These facts are simple realities, but when it is our garden, they can frustrate, hurt and destroy us to the very core of our being,
Some find love in this awareness and embrace it with another when they are younger. Together they tend and care for the garden and the fruit is beautiful and vibrant and good and as long as they continue to maintain it, it is good.
Others find their garden destroyed from neglect or abuse again and again and again until there seems to be nothing left save some parched land and browning weeds. Gardening becomes frustrating and good gardens cannot possibly exist. There is the dream of a lush and vibrant garden, but it is just that, merely a dream. Those may even look at other gardens and wonder when the weeds will choke the life out of those and the bugs and vermin will trample them to ruin just like what has happened to theirs.
When you are shoved in the dirt and covered in shit it is hard to believe that the garden of love can thrive. The awareness has replaced the innocence. We all too often settle for what is there knowing that weeds have the life giving nutritional value of sawdust and we waste away grieving.
So should someone equally hurt see a seed shoved in the dirt and covered in shit, they may see the beauty of soil and fertilizer where something just might grow?
But how do you trust that gardener? How do you look at light and rain and tending and trust it? It always starts off with promises and enthusiasm, right? It always starts with the promise of the garden to be. When the words are just words, then that is all there is....words.
These gardens are harder to tend. But that lack of ignorance has a brighter side, the knowledge of what is needed and the patience to allow the seed the space it needs to grow along with the invitation to truly get some dirt under the nails and sweat on the brow.
It is hard work, especially in the early going. The soil needs to be turned and uprooted so the weeds can be exposed and gently removed, even the ones with spikes and thorns. The soil will need the nutrients of love and light and honesty and constant presence. Curious predators will try to revisit the garden they once devoured and have to be shooed away. But with the right effort, the right time, and with sore knees, sweaty brows and calloused hands the seed will sprout from the earth it was shoved and the garden will begin to grow.
There is a book in the Bible that makes no mention of the divine, but does express the divine love and passion between between two people. That book is called Song of Songs or Song of Solomon. It is poetry. Love poetry.
In it, it speaks of the gardens. Here is a sample
Come my beloved let us go out into the fields
and lie all night among the flowering henna.
Let us go early to the vineyards
to see if the vine has budded,
if the blossoms have opened
and the pomegranate is in flower.
There I will give you my love.
and at our doors
is rare fruit of every kind, my love,
I have stored away for you.
...of pomegranate trees heavy with fruit,
flowering henna and spikenard,
spikenard and saffron, cane and cinnamon,
with every tree of frankincense,
myrrh and aloes,
all the rare spices.
You are a fountain in the garden,
a well of living waters
that stream from Lebanon.
breathe upon my garden,
let its spices stream out.
Let my lover come into his garden
and taste its delicious fruit.
I have come into my garden,
my sister, my bride,
I have gathered my myrrh and my spices,
I have eaten from the honeycomb,
I have drunk the milk and the wine.
to see the new green by the brook,
to see if the vine had budded,
if the pomegranate trees were in flower.
And oh! before I was aware,
she sat me in the most lavish of chariots.
I could go on, especially to the bits about feasting in the garden together all night until the dawn comes.
The only way we will ever get to truly taste the fruits of the garden of love, the more work and tending in neglected gardens we will have to take. It comes with risk. It comes with dangers. It is full of weeds and predators and the soil has been damaged from past events. But it is worth it.
Does our lack of ignorance make the prospect of the garden more difficult than we thought when we were innocent? Of course it does. However, the awareness and wisdom can also serve to make us better gardeners and produce the sweetest fruit and most luscious garden you have ever imagined. Then you can delight in the garden you dreamed of in innocence because you helped create it with someone who shared your vision and got the joke.
Now, if you will excuse me, I have some soil to till.
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