Inside Out

I have often wondered about the relationship between people's lifestyle choices and their spiritual beliefs. The vicar's posh new car (I think he was moderately offended when I asked if god had given him a pay-rise). The Christian colleagues judgemental attitude to people who live differently than she. The number of Muslim men who frequent the local pubs. Isn't their supposed to be a link between what you believe and how you live your life? I am a camper, a walker and a gardener. I may not always practice what I preach but in this small way I try to make some everyday links between my belief in the divinity of the natural order and my everyday relationship with it. I thought I would share some of my musings on this.

The house in which I grew up has a very large window in the lounge, which gives a picture like view of my father's perfect garden. He is engaged in a constant struggle to overcome the threat of disorder in his garden. Pesticide, herbicide, fertiliser and plant food in bottles aid his campaign. Plants must be only where he puts them. The ground between them must be bare and brown broken to a fine tilth. The grass mercilessly mown down to a carpet-like finish and stripped of all daisies. I can't help but see this as a battle to control and subdue nature. It's pretty and colourful but not very natural. My garden is somewhat different. The plants grow as they please and spread across the ground. There is a mixture of what I plant and what just arrives. No pesticides or other chemicals visit my little plot our fertiliser being supplied by my happy little hens (happy cause we are vegetarian) and home made compost. My lawn is full of daisies, dandelions and buttercups. I grow herbs for kitchen and medicine chest and take fruit from a few trees. I choose the plants by their relationship to the insects and other wildlife. I had a vegetable garden till I went back to work fulltime. My relationship with my garden is not a battle but rather a conversation. It's not as 'pretty' as my Dads; in fact he would descried as a wilderness (as though that were a bad thing) but it is alive in more than the usual sense.

I am aware of my garden as a living thing. It's not one single entity but a myriad of voices joined in one song. Sometimes I have to choose between one voice and another when the plants compete or damage each other. At these times I listen to the general tune and try to act in accordance with it rather than the individual voice. When I gently uproot a plant that has become 'inharmonious' I add it to the compost pile to feed future growth. Nothing ever truly dies, only moves its energy round. I am not the conductor of this music; I am the person with the job of maintaining the conditions in which the music can be expressed. I am also a part of my garden, organically located in it, of the soil and substance.

This approach is consistent with both my spiritual beliefs and my practical application of them in my everyday life. That I suppose is the point.

Homes today are double glassed and centrally heated; this artificial environment goes beyond simple creature comfort and represents a move to separate oneself from nature. To live in a safe little bubble, sealed and preserved like a pickle. Perhaps if people sat more in nature they would feel more kinship with it. Feeling oneself to be natural can be a big incentive to protect nature. So that's it my musing on the theme of why gardening is an example of spiritual practice.