A Harvest of Presence

A Harvest of Presence

"It's an oasis!" - "I feel like I'm back in Costa Rica." - "It reminds me of Hawaii." - "Hydrangeas don't bloom in Florida!" - "Your garden always makes me feel good." said friends, strangers, or neighbors walking past our garden. It began simply enough as a six foot plot of earth with a Pygmy Palm in the middle of it. Then a family of Sandhill Cranes looking for grubs expanded it to eight feet. Their search for food compelled us to do something with the mound of now bare soil they'd overturned.

The teachings on Nature by Sufi mystic Inayat Khan came to mind. He said, "There is only one holy book. It is the sacred manuscript of Nature and it is the only scripture that can enlighten the reader." He went on, "All scriptures, before Nature's manuscript, are just little pools of water before the ocean." His teachings on Nature blended easily with our own practices on Mindfulness. In that perfect alignment of being present in the moment "The Garden" came into being.

It didn't come with instructions on what to plant. So we just sat with it intuitively. Using mindfulness techniques we were present to every nuance it revealed. We felt the warm humid atmosphere in and around the area. It was a vibrant place filled with insects and birds. Digging into the soil we saw tan-colored dry sand and black moist clay battle for dominance. Mindful tilling uncovered earthworms everywhere that were helping to aerate the soil with long trenches. Sadly, they also fed the white Ibises that arrived in flocks every morning at dawn. A few earthworms usually escaped the long curved bills which probed deep inside their trenches. It was nature teaching about life.

Days settled into weeks and then months as we prepared the planting bed. We planted by season, consciously watching the direction of the sun's angle to the garden. We saw how its progression across the sky brilliantly lit the garden or where it left shadows from the palm. The sun guided which plants would work best. But it was the flowers that told us what to do. We were present to each one of them in their growing season, selecting glorious shrubs and annuals in a riot of colors.

We spent our days digging, spading, fertilizing, watering, and pruning. We talked to the plants if they were stressed, assuring them all was well. We praised the ones that produced the most brilliant blossoms, telling them how remarkable they were. When experts assured us we couldn't grow roses in the heat of Florida we shrugged pointing to the pink, yellow, or red long stemmed beauties. "Tell them!" we said.

Every morning we made a daily pilgrimage into the garden. We admired each plant, propping up some dirt around the base of one, removing a twig that had fallen on a flower, or cutting off a dead branch. We touched their leaves in silent homage. We hovered over a new seedling like expectant mothers. We showered gratitude and appreciation for each one of their unique expressions. In time we came to realize working the garden had become it's own form of meditation - a most natural and easy form of direct communication with nature.

Inayat Khan said every leaf is a page that contains divine revelation. In the ten seasons as caretakers of the garden it's taught us how to read the manuscript of Nature. The manuscript showed there was a cycle of birth, growth, and death in every entity. While plants do grow tall and burst with flowers, soon those flowers die, their seeds feeding the birds. But always, life continues. Some seeds that fall to the ground become seedlings. In time, those seedlings become mature plants with new flowers, repeating the cycle of birth, growth and death. The plants were no different than the Sandhill Cranes who returned every spring, laid eggs, hatched their babies and taught them how to feed on grubs and earthworms, often in our garden.

Nature is a fully balanced organism. It doesn't really need humans. But humans need it. It transports us to a place outside ourselves. It gives us the space to slow down and to appreciate the magnificent colors and scents that can alter our moods. It teaches us about birth, life and death. It allows us the freedom to become at peace with this knowledge. And it bestows its bounty on those who take the time to let it. The Garden is a Harvest of Presence moments. All one must do is practice presence and patience and listen.
 

Jo Mooy - September 2015

Walnuts And A Piano

Walnuts and a Piano

   

There's a rhythm to life. It's a musical quality that asks us to hear the cords and feel the vibration of sound that carry our emotions from the highs through the lows and back again. The recognition of this rhythm allows us to live in balance and to enjoy the music of life. 

This time of year always pulls at my heart and mind with sweet remembrances of the rhythm of childhood. Perhaps it's the blustery feel to the weather, the knowing that winter is soon to come, or a recognition of the gentle turn of the seasonal cycles. Certainly ancient cultures honored this time of year, the time of the thinning veils. The Celts honored it with ritual and the ceremonies of Samhain. This time of year creates an opening that allows for the fine tuning of my inner nature and with it, the ability to appreciate the song that became who I am.

Autumn is a time of preparation for the mysterious and sacred winter-time ahead. In California, where I grew up there wasn't a winter that was severe or dangerous, yet there was still something otherworldly about it.  It was a season of deeper inner silence.  During this time, as we made ready for the shorter days and longer, mysterious nights, we felt closer to something magical.  Of course, much of that magic revolved around that most sacred of children's holidays, Christmas.  Christmas required great preparation and just as the ancient people we had our own rituals that readied us the special time ahead.

One particular autumn shaped my life forever more. Our mom cooked good food that was as delicious as it was nutritious. In fall she prepared for the holidays by baking cookies - lots of them in a great variety of shapes, flavors and textures. Cookies are a treat that nourish us on so many levels. They bring joy to the taste buds, a lightness to the mind and a healing of the soul.

But the kind of baking our mom did required lots of ingredients and some were expensive and hard to come by in those days. So every October our family was packed into the car for an hour drive south of our home in San Jose to a place where the main north south road, highway 101 narrowed to 2 lanes and where towering black walnut trees lines the road. There we'd park the car as each of us were given burlap bags to fill with the green round pods that had dropped from the trees. These pods held the treasured meat that would in December become Russian tea cakes, one of Mom's specialties made only when the weather was cooler. I could almost taste them as I gathered my walnuts in my sack.

I knew the whole procedure by heart. I knew this movement of our life's musical movement well. When we got home my dad would lay 2x4s on the ground and nail them together to make a pen to hold the walnuts while the outer shells dried out in the sun for weeks. When they were ready to be hulled he took his large carpenter's hammer smashing the thick outer shell tossing them onto tin baking pans. Then each evening we'd all dig out the precious tasting walnut meat for the inevitable holiday baking to come. All of this lay in the depths of my psyche as we hunted for the round treasures hidden under the fallen leaves of the great old trees.

That particular year mom needed to use the restroom on our trek home from the walnuts. In that part of the world, on a blustery fall Sunday, there weren't too many options for her. My father found a seedy looking bathroom on the outside of a dilapidated filling station where the gas attendant barely looked up as he pumped gas into our station wagon.  When mom came back to the car she was carrying a big leather purse which she didn't have when she left. She and my dad held a muted conversation but I caught snippets of it. "Someone left their purse..." "I don't feel right leaving it..." "Would you trust..." 

I think there were more walnuts to be had but something had changed and we headed home. The bags of walnuts were piled in the backyard forgotten now as we gathered round as mom and dad opened the purse tentatively. My parents were honest hard-working folks so we could see they felt like sneaks just opening the bag to see if there was some id in it. Even before they'd opened it there was talk of placing ads in the personals to see if the owner could be found. Each article was removed and placed carefully on the kitchen table, some tissue, a wallet, a comb, a huge diamond ring. Even to a kid's eye, you could tell this was very valuable, And then the one thing they had hoped to find, an address book which identified the owner.

They immediately called the number in southern California. The son answered and as soon as Dad told him what they'd found he was jubilant. His parents had called a few hours before, devastated that his mother had lost her purse. They looked everywhere, drove miles back retracing their stops to no avail so were cutting their trip short and coming home. He had no way to reach them until they arrived home as it was well before the time of cell phones. Instead he told my father that the ring was his mother's wedding ring and very valuable. It seemed she usually took it off when in the car as her fingers got swollen when she sat for long periods of time.

Arrangements were made to return the purse and everything in it was packed with great care. The next day it was mailed, insured and sent to a woman we had never met. When it arrived, the lady called, thanking my parents for their honesty and for their kindness. My parents assured them it was no problem, and not to give it a  second thought. I could tell by the smiles on my parent's faces that their reward was the warmth that comes with bringing great joy to someone and in this case someone they would never meet. Then the incident was forgotten and we went back to our rhythm, the walnuts were laid in the sunshine to dry, children went to school, fathers to work and mom kept the home fires burning.

A few days later, a letter arrived in it was a check for $300, a small fortune in 1961. It was a small token of their gratitude from the lady and her husband. The ring had been in the family for a very long time and was irreplaceable. My parents called them saying they couldn't accept it as they had only done what anyone would have, but the lady insisted. She said that many would not have returned it and that they had the money so it would was a pleasure to thank them. It turned out that was the amount of cash the woman had in her wallet when it was lost but my parents had never even looked in the wallet.

Mom wanted to use the money to pay bills and maybe buy nice Christmas gifts, but dad was adamant. "You are going to get something for yourself; something that will make you happy." A few weeks later, a used upright piano arrived. My mother who had learned to play as a child sat down and was in her element.

That Christmas there was music, real music, not from the radio but from our mother's fingers and from her heart. And much like the home baked cookies the music was sweet and nourished us in unseen ways, body mind and spirit. The piano reset the rhythm in our household and the music in our lives. This fall just like every other fall, I think of walnuts and a piano and how that came to be such an indelible memory in my life.

 

Patricia Cockerill - October 2013