Garden and Gate

Here is a picture of the new gate Jim built for the fenced garden at the retreat house. The original gate fell apart this past winter, but this new gate is attractive, deer-proof and strong! Jesus said: 

I am the gate, whoever enters through me will be saved, they will come in and go out, and find pasture.   John 10:9

Stepping through a gate is an experience of encounter or an adventure. A new horizon or experience opens up when we go through a gate. As a young priest I used to take a prayer day at an old Franciscan novitiate nearby which had been a rich man's North Shore estate in its 1930's heyday.

I remember pulling back the vines and going through the door-like gate and being disappointed  that the garden, with its gravel paths and wide flower beds had fallen into ruin - invaded by weeds and gone to seed. But the experience filled me with imagination too, and I found bushes there covered with ripe raspberries. And for about 7 minutes I played with the idea of asking the brothers if I could take over the garden and bring it back. Like I didn't already have enough to do in my parish.

But when going through the gate is an interior experience I might be led to ask myself questions I might otherwise never approach:

• Why am I this way?
• Why might someone say this or that about me?
• Why do I keep repeating the same mistakes?
• Why am I so unhappy? So fearful?
• Why do I feel so shallow?
• Why do I feel I've done so little with my life?
• Why after so long am I still...?

We often never get around to asking the why questions about ourselves. It takes a lot of hard work to go through the inner gate to ask why.

And here at the retreat house, the new gate takes us over into a garden. A garden is an image of cultivation and growth. It symbolizes that inner place where I have things to take care of and places to grow:

• to grow up the inner capacities I have been given
• to find emotional balance and well-being
• to treat an addiction or some pathology
• to come to an understanding of what I can do to contribute to the future
• to tend to my soul-life: that I am God's much-loved child

The prophet Jeremiah writes:

They shall come and sing aloud on the heights of Zion, and they shall be radiant over the goodness of the Lord, over the grain, the wine, and the oil, and over the young of the flock and the herd; their life shall be like a watered garden, and they shall languish no more. Jeremiah 31: 12

The soul is likened to our inner feeling-place and our feelings can be all over the place: our wounded pride, nurtured resentments, the exhilaration that lasts perhaps only a moment, the perception of God's presence in love, the peaceful awareness of inner healing.

Psychologically, a garden is a symbol of consciousness. And a walled, fenced or hedged garden is an image of protecting what is interiorly my very own (mine and mine alone). This could be a sense of shame or regret for some mistake in the past or some personal delight that others might well not understand or value. It's not necessary for everyone to know everything about me. I'd say there's a time to enter the garden and close the gate - gently. 

A Gardener's Prayer (In a Kind of Celtic-American Tradition)

Good morning, One in Three ~
Hello and Glory to you!

in the falls and frills of Iris, 
in the secret strength of seeds,
in the scent on breezes, 
and the decay of compost,

in the rocks and the rain,
in the fog-covered hill,
in the in-and-out sun,
and the flute-stream nearby,

in the shade of my cap,
in the sharpness of blade,
in the malleable soil,
and the contest of bird-song,

in the freshness of dill,
in the blister that's healing,
in the variance of cloud
and the red-painted fern ~

first showings of your transfigured face!

Mary's Garden

Forget Me Not ~ Mary's Eyes

The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins calls The Virgin Mary the air we breathe. Perhaps another way of saying it is Mary creates an atmosphere around Jesus: humility, quiet reflection, maternal love, the clean heart of the Gospels, living in God's Word, endurance and fidelity, praise and faith. 

Prior to the Protestant Reformation all flowers in Europe had Marian names celebrating some aspect or virtue of the Mother of Jesus. Mary Gardens were planted to celebrate and keep that atmospheric sense sensually alive! 

The Medieval poem-prayer to the Virgin Mary: O Maria virgo pia - which accompanies the flower images here,  is sung by the group Anonymous 4. The group's name Anonymous suggests that the praises matter, not who the singers are. Here is the English translation of the Latin: 

O pious Virgin Mary,
full of the grace of God,
you are called Star of the Sea
giving comfort by your light.

Christ's body,
which you have truly carried in your womb,
is hallowed so that through it 
the serpent is completely doomed.

This is the body, O Mary,
born by you as virgin,
with which you were pregnant,
pious virgin, by the Holy Ghost.

This is the flesh
nailed to the yoke of the cross;
after its crucifixion it rose 
and returned life to the world.

Let us now praise 
Mary's wonderful Son
and sing this song
to the King of all kings.