A new day dawns, once more the gift is giv’n.
Wonder fills this moment shared together.
The light of peace here shines upon each face.
May it bring faith to guide our journey home.*
The wonder of a moment. My gardens, the ones I and my family have created and tended over the years, have always offered up the wonder of the moment whenever I have taken the time to be there, in the garden, in the moment. These days, the wonder is often the goldfinches landing like drops of gold from the sky on the Echinachea flower heads, now dried and full of seeds for the taking. They take off like tiny missiles with their mouths full of seeds reminding me of the marvel of how Nature does her work through each Being. When each Being does what it does (flowers making seeds, birds eating and carrying seeds to other places) life extends itself for another season.
The light of peace. Whether I have had just a short stroll into my garden, or I have spent exhausting, sweaty hours doing heavy work there, I always come away changed–physically for sure, but amazingly, mentally and emotionally as well. There is a Deep Silence in the garden that allows my harried mind to sort things out and calm down. Even after the hardest work days in the garden, I would still call it peace that I come away from the garden in possession of. I am fairly convinced that this is the result of some silent, invisible interchange between the power of The Garden and the power of my life.
The Garden restores an original peace that belongs to us. The Garden allows us to regain an experience of the essence of who we are that our lives outside The Garden tend to strip away. That, I think, is because we have not learned yet to find The Garden wherever we are.
Bob Patrick
*Jason Shelton, “Morning Has Come,” in Singing the Journey Home, 2005
