A Garden Meets You Where You Are
When I was young, my Nonna's garden was a sanctuary of safety. Swaddling me in the soils of healthy nurturing and offering entry into my malnourished worlds of innocence and play.
In college, the garden I volunteered at was a rose. Imbued with the intoxicating scent of my soul’s longings and prickled with the thorns of what was being abandoned in the name of someone else's dream.
During my years of living and working on organic farms, the garden was a gigantic mirror.
Some days it was like obsidian — reflecting every abandoned part of myself, ravaging fires of repressed anger and pools of untapped grief.
Sometimes it was as clear as a still lake. Offering the reflection of my potential in emptiness.
Illuminating the uncomfortable reminder of my time filled with foreign energies solidified in my own being to such a degree that all I knew was pain.
Yet, here I stood, empty — realizing I had to get to know myself as though I were just coming into the world.
Sometimes, it was a diamond. Refracting the rainbow of my own potential, boundless heart, and fiery intoxication for Life.
While farming, I saw many different people interacting with and practicing gardening. In deciding to stay put at one farm – a transient portal of 20-somethings courageously deciding to take the road less traveled, I witnessed endless comings and goings.
In my observations, something became dramatically apparent.
A garden meets you where you are
Those who arrived broken-hearted were swaddled in the beauty of endless lush micro-ecosystems. Giving fruit trees, dancing flowers, and the endless hymns of the rushing river all reminded them, with subtle precision, that they would be okay.
The ones who arrived anxious and over-stimulated were immediately met by an onslaught of resistance. Their minds lost in the psychedelic desert of nowhere to go, nothing to accomplish, and no one to be. A barren landscape withering under the weight of progress.
They worked on tasks whose supreme ordinariness and methodical nature eventually swept foreign freneticism from their aura, inviting a descent into the drumming rhythm of their animal body.
With time — and gardening — these same people left the farm relaxed, trusting, and forging a fruitful relationship with the Great Mystery.
Many arrived desperate to heal the Earth. Rattled with anger and disbelief at what was happening to our planet, these people were ready to give every fiber of their being to anything that could help.
For these ones, the garden became a wise grandmother — singing them Icaros that came with the realization that they were not just grieving the harm inflicted on the Earth-body but also — the damage inflicted upon their own bodies. The Great Mother was here, in the form of a garden, to remind them of their goodness.
EDEN
the membership
Some will wander in, hungry for concepts and information. Desiring to remember that what you see and know is not crazy but simply far more subtle than you’d previously realized.
You will devour the class series — from both myself and the rich gold mine of teachers and practitioners — hand selected with the same intentionality as a companion plant. Marigolds make tomatoes better, after all.
Others will arrive seeking practice, tools, and direct experience. Those whose systems are yearning to digest and metabolize years of esoteric feeding.
You will revel in the Attunements, the growing library of bespoke practices, and the boundless opportunities for integration — be it a movement class, a tea ceremony, or an anger walk.
You will become a rich compost pile – breaking down, transforming, decomposing, and distributing every last strand of spiritual concept into authentic embodiment.
Some will arrive whose hearts yearn to see and be seen. To understand and be understood.
Perhaps no one in your life is currently able to meet you. Maybe up until this point, it has been you, animals, and plants — the non-human community where you are free to be yourself.
You will enjoy simply bathing in pools of resonance — be it a class, sharing your heart on a Circle, or remembering yourself in the eyes of another Devotee.
Some will pass through to find a specific fruit, vegetable, or flower. 1 concept is all you need. 1 practice. 1 realization. 1 moment of healing. And you will be complete.
Just a peach from a well-tended fruit tree and onto the next leg of your journey. Just a single birdsong to remind you that your song is a part of the symphony of Creation. Just one heirloom tomato was the final ingredient to complete the recipe you have been cooking for decades.
Whoever, wherever, and whenever you are — the garden meets you where you are.
