Tending my garden helps me think of ways to grow a better world

Tending my garden helps me think of ways to grow a better world

Commentary by Janet Marugg | FāVS News

I tend a garden to tend my mind. Alone long enough with a pack of seeds and a patch of soil, a woman can get a good thing going, a friendship circle of sunflowers, a reunion with last year’s compulsive propagators and baskets of nourishment. I make a contract with a patch of ground every year because the soil is where some of my happiness is born. 

Gardeners, by definition, are hopeful people. My hope is in the seeds I care for even in dormancy. I call them my Hopium Collection. Seeds are all the potential for beauty, the graceful arch of a stem that has yet to grow, the shape of a leaf, the color of the flower, the abundance of fruit. They are everything that is possible and hold all the faith I can muster.

Diversity is present in seeds, just like in people. There are seeds that need fire, seeds that need freezing, seeds that need to be swallowed and etched with digestive acids and expelled as “waste” and seeds that need to be smashed open before they germinate. Metaphorically rich stuff.

Resistance against life’s erosions

Growing things is my act of resistance against the eroding world, the entropy of natural decomposition, the maw at my center of gravity. If I didn’t have my little garden, I’d adopt a piece of nowhere — a path through a forest, a section of barrow pit, a mud puddle at the edge of a quarry — any place will do. It will be mine to defend with all the preservation instincts I know, its very existence enough to inspire me. 

As the leaves of trees fall and return to soil like everything else, I think of the progress of undoing. “Deconstruction” is a trendy term and click-driver on social media these days describing the process of critically examining a religious belief system. I prefer the term “transformation” for that is the natural work of this world and what we do as humans, but I don’t use social media enough to defend myself. Still, words matter to me.

The words “tree” and “truth” share the same Indo-European root — “deru-” meaning firm and steadfast, which produced the Old English “treowe,” which we now know as “true,” The words “trust” and “truce” branch from this root as well, but I hardly think trees care for etymological dictionaries. Trees are too busy doing the magic of alchemy, turning mineral to carbon before returning to the soil where the tree is unmade.

What can ‘missing the mark’ mean?

Soil is a word that used to mean both good and evil. Soil is land, place and ground on earth where plants grow; it also means to defile or pollute with sin. The word sin is often, maybe always, misunderstood. Etymologically speaking, “sin” is an ancient Greek archery term meaning “missed the mark.” 

For me, there is no supernatural punishment prescribed to my missed marks, no supernatural judge to warrant a speck of existential dread. As a secular humanist, I measure the morality of my marks by whether they contribute to the wellbeing of humans over the care and feeding of a supernatural deity. When mark-missing is denatured and super-naturalized, it produces unnecessary mental and emotional distress. People who are taught to believe that others are supernaturally sinful or unholy tend to dehumanize them, especially LGBTQ folks, women, BIPOC, poor, weak, ill, etc. Dehumanizing others incubates two things: extremism and atrocities. Atrocities, by definition, are never a moral mark.

For me, this is what sticks: a less superstitious world, one without religious-excused bigotry and apocalyptic thinking, one with greater tethering to this world and each other would be more just, more compassionate and more humane. 

Improving my aim to hit my marks

Winter is long for ruminating weedy things. I like the idea that people are good or simply neutral by nature and sometimes miss their marks. We can always practice our aim, our technique or actions and our delivery. Humans have been adapting to our environment and adjusting ourselves and our societies for a long time we or wouldn’t be here. The fittest to survive is always those able to adapt, those who successfully transform with the rest of nature. It’s what humans do because we must. Naturally.

I plan to spend the winter practicing my aim. There is always work to do fighting natural decay and destruction to keep a body and mind maintained, to keep the world a place where humans thrive. When seed catalogs arrive to draw my drool and stoke my cabin-fevered throes of winter, I’ll renew my contract with my patch of soil with the aim of growing a world where humans thrive.

The views expressed in this opinion column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of FāVS News. FāVS News values diverse perspectives and thoughtful analysis on matters of faith and spirituality.