Rocks & Blood

[Garden Memories: XXI]

We had a basic diving rock near the deep end of our pool. Next to it was a small patch of grass in the shape of a circle. If you think of the lawn as a clock, the diving rock was on the perimeter at 7 o’clock. Well, one could get out of the pool at 5 o’clock, run counter clockwise along the edge of the lawn, and arrive at the rock running full speed. This one lap turned our humble rock into a launchpad, and made for hours and hours of play. 

I believe any connection to the divine reality is like that rock we had growing up: it ought to produce joy and maybe a bit of playfulness.

But joy does not mean just laughter or bliss. That's too thin. And untextured. For divine joy to have any kind of staying power or depth it must involve risk. It must be bigger and more dangerous than a mere lift of serotonin. 

This is why a fabricated “god-experiences” that requires perfect lighting, smoke machines, and theater seats is more propaganda (emotional manipulation?) than an actual encounter with the divine. 

A friend of my brother ran and jumped off the rock as many of us did for years. He misjudged the depth of the water and as a consequence lost at least a pint of blood from a two inch gash in his forehead. 

Joy will always include risk. And sometimes blood.

Rocks & Camouflage

[Garden Memories: XX] 

Growing up, my favorite make-believe character to play was GI Joe, surely due to the popularity of the cartoon but also because camouflage clothes were easy to come by. While we didn’t technically have a Tupperware full of dress-up clothes, we had stacks of camo pants, shirts and jackets—basically the only dress-up attire Mom could stomach. 

So, I always wanted to be an “army guy,” and in the world of my imagination, all soldiers would love what I love: fishing and hiking. To be a proper soldier meant I blended into my surroundings—face paint included—and I went on long, adventurous, quarter-mile (!) hikes. 

It was always the same outfit and the same destination: camouflage and the big granite outcropping just beyond our property. 

Childhood make-believe is paradoxically the furthest and closest thing from reality. The furthest, for obvious reasons. I didn’t have a clue what the military was like, and I didn’t have the capacity to understand war, to name only two. But often it’s the closest because within the imagination of children are the purest desires of the heart. Those early desires are the reality we spend our entire adult lives running from, repressing, or denying. 

What memory do you have that carries a truth you've been running from? 

Rocks & Ducks

[Garden Memories: XIX] 

Next to the huge granite rock with the grinding holes left to us by the Maidu tribe was another large granite shelf that lifted just above ground level. Between them was a large crack about four feet wide by twelve feet long, no deeper than a kiddy pool. One year for Easter, Mom got us all pekin ducklings, with the idea that we could somehow turn the granite fissure into a small duck pond. 

The two parallel rock shelfs were on a slight grade, so in theory we could damn up the lower end, and the crevasse would hold water. One or two bags of concrete is all it would take, Mom thought. The problem, as we learned, is that concrete and natural rock don’t create a water tight bond. Our duck pond lasted a day or two. Then we’d refill it. Then it would last another day or two. (I believe the ducks either got tired of waiting for a permanent fix, or we misjudged the threat of coyotes. Either way, they didn’t stay around long.)

Our pond idea reminds me of the self-help work that is suppose to pass as personal development or deep healing. Many of us, with good intentions and hopes of real change, implement our (or other’s) good ideas without developing an understanding of the problem, the substance of what we’re dealing, or the depth of our wounds. We think a little concrete patchwork will be water tight. And it never is. 

Real inner work—also known as the spiritual journey, as I see it—is the long slow work of reshaping the contours of our existence. That requires deep, sustained, intentionality and commitment. And grace. For us from without and from us from within. 

Rocks & Acorns

[Garden Memories: VIII] 

Rocks have spiritual potential. I don’t mean that in a crystal-and-magic sort of way, though I’m not going to deny that people who wear crystal pendants might be onto something. I’m just not one of those people. I mean it in a much more basic way. 

I’ve spent hundreds of hours extracting river rocks when I cleared the ground for a garden in Idaho. I’ve broken my back contending with rocks trying to install drainage in Tennessee. I’ve built rock walls with lava rock in Hawaii and ripped off my toenail in the process. I’ve worked until pure exhaustion installing French drains with rocks in California. I’ve built rock paths, rock pillars, and rock borders. 

Rock work is the most basic manual labor. There’s not winning. No notoriety. No awards and bonuses. It’s humble work that requires braun and long-suffering. And humans have been doing it forever.

The Maidu Indians are native to the land I grew up on. They too contended with rocks. While the men hunted, the women collected acorns to grind into flour for bread and thickener for soups. With a small rock in hand, they would use the granite outcroppings as giant mortars. Over many years, this mortar and pestle technique ground dimples in the stone that still remain. 

If we allow them, rocks connect us to an ancient past. They stretch us beyond our immediate awareness and offer us an antidote to amnesia. In this way, rocks widen us to the broader, longer human story of working with (and sometimes against) creation. Rocks have spiritual potential because they too ground us in our common humanity. 

Shade Oasis 2

[Garden Memories - VII]

On the steps leading to the front door of my childhood home, thick green lawn, english ivy, and Liquidambars create a microclimate nearly twenty degrees cooler than the rest of the property. Even in the height of summer, the only warmth that reaches the steps are the gentle rays of the morning sun. The rest of the day it’s a shade oasis. 

I can’t remember if we played volleyball all afternoon or finished up a long run. I can’t even remember the occasion. Or the month. Or the year, for that matter. But I do recollect Mom noticing us through the kitchen window and offering watermelon. Instead of a small wedge or two, she brought us each one quarter of a red-fleshed mammoth. We were overwhelmed by the abundance. 

Unashamed, we ate every bit of that juicy, red sweetness. 

To this day I can sense the coolness of those shady steps and the gratification of that watermelon wedge. Sometimes memories are sensations we carry with us in our bodies rather than images or video reels we carry in our minds. The details are long gone, but in our flesh are remnants of the feelings that the experience offered. 

Memory in this way is a type of intuitive bridge between our bodies and our soul. The deepest, fullest experiences we have are not contingent on remembering details, per se, but are instead ones that touched us deeply and continue to move us from within. Several shady places in my mom’s gardens from my youth continue to influence me in this way. 

Shade Oasis

[Garden Memories - VI]

One of the most euphoric spaces at my childhood home began as a fatal mistake. Never, I repeat, never build a house on a negative grade. There is no amount of trenching, reverse grading, or industrial drainage that will beat water in the long run. Water will always comply with the laws of gravity, eventually finding the lowest point. Humans—especially those that sit atop tractors—occasionally forget this fact. 

Mom and Dad built our ranch house about 50 feet Northeast of the highest point on the front half of the property. After excavating the pad, pushing the excess material away from the foundation, building the home, and then landscaping the perimeter, a small vegetation covered crescent of land wrapped around the house like one of those neck rolls linebackers used to wear in the 1980’s. Except the roll was in the front and not the back. 

Naturally, given the orientation, the landscaping, and the slope, the space between the neck roll and house remained wet year around. In heavy rain, water would pool in front of the house. If it wasn’t for steady efforts to divert water, and eventually the addition of a river rock buffer and a French drain, I’m sure our living room would have been an unwanted marsh in the winter. (Side note: Dad was an antlophobiac, I think, mostly because of this early building mistake.) 

The slope that was a saturated sponge in the winter, was thick grass in the hot California summer. Ivy bordered the slope of grass while liquidambars distributed the smallest dappling of sun. On a 105 degree afternoon, the slope was a natural recliner equipped with a vegetative A/C system. It was always a near perfect shade oasis. 

I think when we look at the mystics, we find a spirituality that is much more like this shade oasis than what you might find in church and books in the religion section at Amazon. Spirituality or religious devotion is not so much an antidote to the mistakes we’ve made; it’s not a metaphysical dozer that can come fix your slope and drainage problems. It’s quite the opposite, I think: it doesn’t “fix" but embraces the problems as they truly are, in all their consequences and ugliness. And yet, if it’s true, it will find pockets of beauty. 

Lichen Covered Stones

[Garden Memories - IV]

The front of my childhood home has evolved since I lived there. Trees are much taller, ground covers and other basic landscapes have been overhauled, and even an entire garage was constructed where once stood a fig tree and weeds. There are, however, a few components that look now, regardless of the passage of time and the change in landscape, as I remember them. 

The lichen covered stones Mom framed the driveway with in the 80s hold true to their original purpose all these years later. The small island in the center of the round-a-bout hasn’t moved. The huge iron bell used to call us home for dinner stands dignified at the corner of the parking pad near the main garage. The basketball hoop bears the expected signs of 30 years of age, but it still invites me to shoot a few jumpers as it did long ago.  

The rocks, bell, and hoop are a type of nostalgic braid, woven together to tether me to positive memories of home. But I think there is more going on here. Deep within me—in all of us—is a "nostalgic longing” that we tether to familiar “landmarks” of our past. Often those landmarks are associated to our childhood home because that’s the closest object to the archetypal home we desire. We long for deep union and shalom, which, if we look far enough, is the wombs of our mothers, bassinets our fathers rocked, and yards we learned to walk in. 

Beneath this longing—or, I should say, in the center of this longing—is a hunger for union with the *womb of the world*. With God. With creation (God’s first incarnation). With ourself (God’s image). 

Sure, it’s nostalgia, but it’s also a critical part of our spiritual journey toward Union.

Weeds & Wisdom

[Garden Memories - III]

Lawn and ivy: that’s what Mom used to landscape most of the perimeter of our ranch house. 

Lawn is an obvious choice. With proper irrigation, it offers a weed free green space, a low maintenance ground cover in the winter, and  a “heat dump” in the summer. 

English ivy is a less obvious choice. Sure, it’s low maintenance in theory, but it’s generally used as a border in cooler climate gardens. Mom used it more like a taller lawn, covering thousands of square feet in the front and side yards. Our semi-arid California home was far from the temperate climate of England, which meant two things: it demanded years of irrigation and attention as it limped toward lush maturity, and it needed a lot of weeding support. 

My brothers and I had weeding stations in the ivy. While Mom insisted the stations were proportionate to our age and ability, each of us complained at the daunting responsibility of suppressing the weeds until the ivy could take over. “As soon as the ivy gets established,” Mom would say, “You won’t have to weed anymore.” 

Every week it seemed, usually on Saturday, Mom would send us to our weeding stations. “You’re almost finished” sounded less encouraging than mocking. The weeding seemed futile at best; at worst, it was a torturous curse for thinking we could contend with nature. With no end in sight—mostly due to the disparity in speed between weed an ivy growth—we’d begrudgingly kneel and pull, kneel and pull. 

This went on for years. Indeed, it was a curse. 

And then one spring our weeding stations ended. Never again did we weed the ivy, as it finally was thick enough to slow weed growth and seed germination. 

Wisdom is often merely the vantage point of time. What we're blind to on the “front end,” Mom was keen to from the “back end.” She had the perspective of years, knowing that weeding now will result in no weeding later. As it is with weeding ivy, so it is with life in this way. Life is only lived going forward; it often feels futile, unproductive, and meaningless. But looking backwards, our investments make sense. Do they promote growth and sustainable futures? An answer requires wisdom and lived experience and age. It requires seeing the question from the “back end.” In other words, it requires elders to remind us that we’re not cursed; we’re merely investing in a better future that is emerging. 

Plumbs & Fishing

[Garden Memories: II]

Trees bear so much vital energy; they are too integral in our everyday existence to be reduced to mere set design of our human experiences. Surely some trees can make for a green backdrop, but distinct trees—ones that aren’t tucked into a forested landscape or among many in a grove—like a lone apple tree in front of your childhood home or a weeping willow at grandma’s house or a large fig reaching over your porch, are interactive, energetic, symbolic, and deeply grounding. 

The two plum trees on the southeast corner of the property I grew up on live on in my memory. At the height of summer, when bass fishing in local ponds was best, and my only means of transportation was my BMX, I’d often set out early in the morning to catch a few cool hours before the afternoon heat set in. A small tackle box in one hand and a rod and reel in the other, I’d precariously hold on to the handlebars as I zipped down our road and off to another nearby fishing hole. 

It wasn’t uncommon to miss breakfast in the rush out the door. A boy hankering for fishing can easily go without one meal; missing two is a bit harder. And that’s where the plumbs came to my rescue. A pocket full of plums bought me at least an hour or two more chasing the next catch.  

Fishing was where I came alive as a boy. Time stopped. Serotonin soared. Imagination ran wild. But woven into the tapestry of blissful emotions around fishing is my memory of those purple Damsons plumbs. I can still feel the velvety dust on my fingers and taste the sweet flesh when I think of fishing. The plumb trees are long gone, but they live on my body, in my memory, and in the fishing tales I tell my children. 

5 Acres

[Garden Memories: I]

As the story goes, when my parents bought our five acre piece of property, it was a long drive from urban Sacramento where they lived and it was the least desirable parcel because of it’s lack of trees. They were not deterred, as the distance made it affordable and the dry, empty land could be remedied with hard work and patience. 

They built a humble ranch house and immediately got to work planting trees. Hundreds of trees. Liquidambars, pines, eucalyptus, Japanese maples, willows, figs, plums, apples, and others. Comparing pictures from those early days (before my time) and the property of my memories, is almost as drastic as comparing a desert to a fertile oasis. 

In my core is a unique disposition that is more native than it is noticeable: barren land ought to be nurtured toward fertility and abundance. 

I often wonder if all my gardening efforts are really me finally giving way to a fate that was already scripted, not by some divine puppeteer but by the practices of my parents that happened subtly in the backdrop of my childhood. Perhaps I’m simply discovering new language for what they have always done. 

Mom landscaped; I garden. 
Mom laid drip to water; I irrigate. 
Dad cleaned up and mowed; I steward and weed and cultivate. 
Mom pruned and trained; I thin and harvest and trellis. 

All my gardening, in a way, is an honoring of their hard work. It’s an exercise in embodied thankfulness to the investments they made in creating a flourishing environment for me to grow up in. When I sprouts seeds, transplant, harvest, and even preserve the fruit of my own land, I’m in no small way expressing my appreciation for that once-barren five acres that became a gorgeous green landscape. 

Descend Like Seeds

[Seasons: Autumn XV]

Autumn is the season where the life of summer and the death of winter collide and sparks of color fly. Darkness is near; death is waiting its turn. But the business of summer is not quite finished. The sun’s energy packages all of its warmth and growth into small seeds. Autumn receives the summer seeds with one hand and holds back freezing winter for a couple months with the other. Everything seems to fall, but not without purpose. Leaves fall but will become the mulch to protect the soil from winter’s harsh frost. Nuts and seeds fall, and they’ll become spring’s great rise and summer’s big growth. Inevitably, though, autumn is a fall toward death.

But autumn is never a fall toward “nothingness”. Life’s autumns—the liminal seasons between life and death, celebration and sorrow, growth and  deterioration, light and dark—are never directionless and without purpose. Like the seeds that must fall and imbed in the soil for many months, the purpose of life’s autumns requires descent. Are we willing to dig deep for discover or will we always be satisfied with pretending our autumns are just cooler summers. 

Leaves & Seeds

Liquidambars didn’t only drop seedpods in the fall; they join other trees in putting on a dazzling show of arboreal fireworks. Almost boastfully, their leaves compete for attention—some yellow, some red, and some orange. The Japaneses maple leaves join the competition, turning a heavy red, its bending arms offering the leaves as a type of early wrapped Christmas gift to winter. 

The bare ground from the dry days of summer reveals a storehouse of grass seeds that sprout as the temperature cools and the moisture promises to stay. 

And somewhere between the dying and living are the oak trees that stand their ground, holding strong to their color and form, but even they sacrifice acorns to the changing season, littering the ground with squirrel feed.

Fall reminds us the the inevitability of death isn’t a hopeless downhill charge. It ought to be full of color and sprouts of new life. 

Liquidambars

[Seasons: Autumn XIII]

[I was scanning Consuming Hope, my first book, this morning, and came across a few reflections on autumn. I think closing out this series of autumnal thoughts with a few pieces from that book will add a nice touch.]

Autumn at 7110 Baywood Lane—the house I grew up in and still love—is marked by signs of both dying and explosive life. On one hand, the flowers begin to droop. The frost inflicts pain on the hanging pots first. They have less protection than those that are shielded by ivy or hedges of bushes. The droopy color fades and soon will be given back to the earth as compost, the roots bearing down for the colder nights ahead. The Liquidambars offer seed pods that speckle the driveway like earthly goosebumps. 

Hanging pots and Liquidambars were the seasonal bugles, warning us of a wintery future.

Scarcity is a Construction

[Seasons: Autumn XII]

September is the beginning of fall and is the *heaviest* harvest month. The squash are pleading for cool storage space, the melons are pregnant with sweet watery flesh, and the potatoes are pushing to the surface of the soil. Summer may be the season of abundance, but fall is the season to capture and store the abundance. Without fall preparations, winter will be fraught with cravings for fresh produce. 

Abundance is never wasted, as nature puts everything to use. Humans (and squirrels) merely redirect it to a place that is useful at a later time. Abundance is not a human construction; it’s a baseline truth throughout creation. Scarcity, however, is a human construction, and it’s the consequence of redirecting abundance with selfish intent. Scarcity does not cause greed and waste; scarcity is the result of greed and waste. 

The tree doesn’t produce too few acorns. Somewhere a squirrel is hoarding them. 

Resistance vs Resilience

[Seasons: Autumn XI]

Seasons come an go and come back around again. The cycle is inevitable. Autumn is always either here or behind us and coming again.  Cool autumn weather may roll in as early as September or as later as November. But summer and winter will never conspire to keep autumn away. 

Resistance is the denial of the inevitable. Resisting seasons is futile.

Resilience is preparing for the inevitable. Resilience in the midst of seasons is wise. 

Consider these in light of the seasons of life. An autumn season of loss is inevitable; to resist it is to play make-believe with our emotions and ultimately causes more pain. Resilience is an alternative approach; it includes reflection, introspection, self-care, building support systems, community, and healthy habits. To be resilient is not denial; instead, it is making proactive investments—preparedness for the inevitable seasons of life. 

Harvest Baskets

[Seasons: Autumn X]

August is the *busiest* harvest month on the farm. Tomatoes are drooping with fruit; berry canes are bent over to the ground, offering mouthfuls of delight; the earliest apples are in and the plumbs are eye-level, daily snacks. The storage squash is close and all the brassicas—cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, and the like—can’t be harvested fast enough. Fresh food is everywhere!

What happens in the garden at the end of summer appears to taper off in the fall and run dry in the winter. This is an anthropocentric perspective (which may be a phrase that's new to you, but all it means is seeing something from a human perspective). We’re busiest in August and our harvest baskets are spilling over with end-of-summer produce, but that’s not an indication of the abundance in nature. 

If we remove ourselves from the center, we find that the black bear and the squirrel, for example, fill their “harvest baskets” in fall.

The influence of perspective on our understanding of truth cannot be understated. Our experience, while true, is not the dictator of Truth.   What’s True must account for variance. The exceptions to the rule must find room in the Rule. The deviations need to be included.  

Otherwise, we may think August is the most prolific month. 

Another on its Way

[Seasons: Autumn X]

Autumn is a season of slow dying, as the earth crawls toward the long silence of winter. Grasses dry out and eventually with lay flat and lifeless for months. Trees lose their leaves, as a sacrifice to the earth’s soil. The flowers have long been laid to rest. The vegetables are harvested and the stocks and vines given to the decaying pile of compost. Everything dries out and slows down, bracing for winter. 

Nature responds in a curious way during this winter preparation. She scatters seeds—a hope-filled act in the face of slow death. She excessively invests in future seasons of life. 

When death and decline are all around, new possibilities are being sown. 

While one season ends another is already on its way. 

Wood Heat III

[Seasons: Autumn IX]

On one hand, wood heat is a luxury. It requires wealth because the land from which the wood comes is not free, access to that land not universal, and the means to process the fuel from that land expensive. The physical strength to access, chop, split, and store the wood requires a “wealth” of bodily strength, too. Given that much of the world lives in within urban development, the presence of trees, let alone excess trees to burn, is also consequence of privilege.

On the other hand, wood heat is hard work and profoundly basic. In our case, it’s a willful abandoning of modern luxury (central heat), acceptance of a physical challenge, and an embrace (discipline?) of inconvenience. It also connects us more deeply to the seasons, the soil, the air and weather, the forest, and the fauna. Wood heat is literally recycled sun and carbon, which are the most basic of elements, accessible to anyone willing to slow down and notice. 

I will not be able to untangle or solve this paradox. Wood heat is a privilege and a challenge, a luxury and a discipline. The best I can do is hold them together, humbly, reverently, and with gratitude. 

Wood heat is a metaphor for all tension in life. Anytime we say, “Yeah, but” we miss the holiness of the tension. The more I hold them together and say “Both, and” I more richly experience their beauty and truth. 

Wood Heat II

[Seasons: Autumn VIII]

Sitting around a fire is an ancient practice. Fire was arguably the first human technological invention. It opened our ancestors to a whole frontier of caloric options (meat) and it offered a buffer against harsh weather (cold). It was essential to survival, but it was also critical for group cohesion, storytelling, sharing wisdom, and worship. Fire has literally and figuratively been at the center of human existence forever. 

Could this be why sitting around a fire, mesmerized by the dance of flames, is still soothing? In years past, the fire was the gathering place after the hunt, the day of labor, or the battle. It meant everyone in its reach was alive and apart of the tribe or family. Sitting still and watching, waiting, meant the gift of another day could be counted and the interpretation of its meaning imparted. 

The fire is not only soothing, it is humbling. It reminds us of our frailty and weakness. In its flicker, we see the very tenuousness of our own life—dependent on others, supported by the provisions from the land. This deeply meaningful act of comfort and humility is embedded in our collective conscious. 

The fire is where grief and joy hold hands, celebration and lament commingle, security and fear mix. Fire connects to our ancestors, connects us to the parts or ourselves we neglect or deny, and connects us to our community. 

The fire in my stove in early autumn holds within it, a remnant of this truth.

Wood Heat I

[Seasons: Autumn VII]

We fire up our wood stove in October. The temperature outside, relative to the three months of summer prior, is dank and cold. Nothing cures the chill of the change in autumn weather quite like an indoor fire. 

The first fire of the season is a whole body experience. The cool tension of our largest room is relieved. Blankets tag-team with the stove, couch cushions become warm and inviting, and the overhead fan, set on reverse, provides a gentle, warm breeze. But one’s skin does not experience autumn’s opening fire first. 

That’s the role of the nose: one can smell the first fire almost immediately. Last year’s creosote burns out of the chimney, bringing an outdoor familiarity to the center of the house. Our noses warn us of danger first, but they also sooth us when a scent is associated with a positive memory. The first fire of autumn elicits both. Fire evokes fear, and them almost immediately, hospitality. 

One’s ears also experience the first fire of the fall season. From the crackle of the kindling to the hum of the fan, the woods stove fills an empty space in a large room with the liturgical sounds of the colder season. The stove doesn’t compete for one’s listening attention, it compliments, even harmonizes, with the sounds of home. 

I’ve been to a home that played a video loop of a wood stove on the TV the entire time we ate dinner. It engaged our eyes, offered the appropriate sounds, but neglected to engage our skin and nose. The “idea” of a wood stove is not the same as a wood stove. Without the full-body experience, it’s a gimmick. My appetite for wood heat was not satisfied but intensified; it was not satiated but starved. 

The same is true with the spiritual life. The idea of a changed life—even half experienced!—only increases our cravings for what’s real, embodied, practiced, and fully experienced. For spirituality to be satisfying, it must be a whole body experience.