Long ago, a wise woman taught me one of the truest things I know: the best-kept secrets are usually hidden from plain sight. A plant dismissed as a common weed turns out to be an herb with magnificent healing properties. An ebb tide offers the wondrous possibility of finding sea treasures left behind. Now, as nature’s wheel turns towards spring, we have the opportunity to remember one of life’s most profound secrets just by watching our gardens prepare for the miracle of rebirth.
Change and transformation challenge us at every turn. In the throes of labor, the anguish of loss, or the tremors of terror, we forget that the one thing we can absolutely count on is, sooner or later, the tide will turn and the garden with blossom again. Knowing this doesn’t require faith, just patience. To those of you who look to nature as a comfort and teacher, I offer this letter as I would offer a bouquet from my own garden.
Dear Garden,
I am not yet ready to die back into the earth as you do every autumn. But, because of you, I know I will be ready when the time comes. There’s a lot of room in the world for things to happen. I gain strength from the knowledge that change can occur, that there is free will.
And it all works within a larger pattern. A seemingly dead tree comes to life; flowers bloom from dry wood. This is the natural order of things. You showed it to me.
I know that as a daughter of the earth I will grow, bloom, change, die, and, somewhere within the Mystery, find rebirth. It is a dance and we are the dancers. We move our own ways within the pattern, and we respond in as many different ways as there are beings in the Green Kingdom. In this dance we are partnering with the universe in her spiraling, labyrinthine turnings.
Nothing is perfect in nature—things are crooked, seamed, cracked. If they were perfect, they would lose their beauty. After all, a fault in a crystal causes a rainbow and manure fertilizes and makes our gardens grow.
Yes, we all die. Our lives would lose their beauty if we did not. Even the universe dies. The atoms of the universe are crushed, transformed, and then explode again into new life. In death we lose everything; by death we gain everything new. You taught me this.
We are each alone. In every heart there is a heart of hearts that cannot be shared with anyone else. But this is also our strength, the stone-earth core, the hidden sea. It is the fire that breathes out of us, and the wind that only we can change.
We can never know. That is the inspiration for the songs we make. No certainties are ever given to us, thank the Goddess! Only the meaning that we make ourselves can truly nourish us.
We are not children anymore and cannot ask as gift what we must create. Instead we are given a weightier, more precious gift of possibility—the opportunity to dance instead of walking dully along a dusty path.
We are invited into the deep woods to tune our songs to the rustle of leaves. The woods are wild. Who knows what creatures we’ll meet, to love, dance with, or fight against? All are compost for the soul’s story and grist for psyche’s mill.
Garden, you are a formidable teacher, friend, and sharer of the secret I keep forgetting and relearning with each turning of the Wheel. Thank you for your sweet, wild being, your food and medicine. Thank you for teaching me to weed and prune—vitally necessary wisdoms. Thank you for sanctuary and resiliency, and thank you for the promise of spring.
