Compiled by Michael P. Garofalo
A drop of water has the tastes of the water
of the seven seas: there is no need
to experience all the ways of worldly life. The reflections of the moon on one
thousand rivers are from the same moon: the mind must be full of light.
- Hung Tzu-ch'eng
When I would re-create myself, I seek
the darkest wood, the thickest and most
interminable and to the citizen, most dismal, swamp. I enter as a sacred place,
a Sanctum sanctorum.
There is the strength, the marrow, of Nature.
- Henry David Thoreau, Walking, 1851
We need quiet time to examine our
lives openly and honestly. . . spending quiet time
alone gives your mind an opportunity to renew itself and create order.
- Susan L. Taylor
A stranger here
Strange things doth meet, strange glories see;
Strange treasures lodged in this fair world appear,
Strange all, and new to me.
But that they mine should be, who nothing was,
That strangest is of all, yet brought to pass.
- Thomas Traherne (1637-1674)
The Salutation
The tree which moves some to tears of
joy is in the eyes of others
only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all
ridicule and deformity . . . and some scarce see nature at all.
But to the eyes of the man of imagination,
nature is imagination itself.
- William Blake
Sure as the most certain sure
.... plumb in the uprights,
well entreated, braced in the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery we stand.
Clear and sweet is my soul
.... and clear and sweet is all
that is not my soul,
Lack one lacks both .... and
the unseen is proved by the seen
Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.
To elaborate is no avail
.... Learned and unlearned feel that it is so.
- Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, Line 40-
The highest human purpose is always
to reinvent and celebrate the sacred.
- N. Scott Momaday
After a few hours of
sweating with dirt all over me and insects buzzing around
the upper half of my body, I may begin to get a sense of being in tune
with
nature. It's at these moments where I take note of a worm that is
maneuvering
its way out of the dirt or a butterfly that silently lands on a bush next to
me. With
subtlety and a total lack of self consciousness, I come out of myself, look
around,
marvel at the majesty of what I am experiencing and begin to take note that
I
have entered some type of altered state of consciousness.
- Fran Sorin, Exploring
Spirituality in the Garden
Of course the Dharma-body of the
Buddha was the hedge
at the bottom of the garden. At the same time, and no less
obviously, it was these flowers, it was anything that I - or
rather the blessed Not-I - cared to look at.
- Aldous Huxley
People who take the time to be alone
usually have depth,
originality, and quiet reserve.
- John Miller
The secret of happiness lies in
taking a genuine interest in all
the details of daily life, and in elevating them to art.
- John Ruskin
We think in generalities, but we live
in details.
- W.H. Auden
People say "I want
peace." If you remove I (ego), and your
want (desire), you are left with peace.
- Satya Sai Baba
“A certain day became a presence
to me; there it was, confronting me — a sky, air, light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over
and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task. The day’s blow
rang out, metallic — or it was I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can.”
- Denise Levertov, Variation on a Theme by Rilke
(The Book of Hours, Book I, Poem 1, Stanza 1)
There are sacred moments in life when
we experience
in rational and very direct ways that separation, the
boundary between ourselves and other people and
between ourselves and Nature, is illusion. Oneness is
reality. We can experience that stasis is illusory and
that reality is continual flux and change on very subtle
and also on gross levels of perception . . .
- Charlene Spretnak
Wherever you are is
home
And the earth is paradise
Wherever you set your feet is holy land . . .
You don't live off it like a parasite.
You live in it, and it in you,
Or you don't survive.
And that is the only worship of God there is.
- Wilfred Pelletier and Ted Poole
Gardening and Spirituality
A short essay by Mike Garofalo
What I know of the divine sciences
and Holy Scriptures,
I learned in woods and fields. I have no other masters
than the beeches and the oaks.
- Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
I believe in God, only I spell it
Nature.
- Frank Lloyd Wright
One cannot but be in awe when one
contemplates the mysteries of
eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough
if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.
Never lose a holy curiosity.
- Albert Einstein
Although weeding,
cutting back, and transplanting are activities that
may seem repetitive and never-ending, when seen as a necessary and
integral part of the overall unfolding of the garden scheme, they become
purposeful rather than boring. In fact, what may appear on the surface
to be tedious physical work may, in the actual doing, be spiritually
liberating. In taking time to contemplate the small — in observing
the
details of our gardens — we can experience life on a manageable scale.
-
Marilyn Barrett, Creating Eden: The Garden as a Healthy Space
Life is a mystery until you
touch the reality beyond the veil. When
the mind is still and the search is intense, we have the vision to see
reality all around us. Every person you meet is in a world you could
know. Nature waits for our entrance, whether it is a forest or a
rose.
All around us is the Spirit Presence waiting for a quiet mind and an
open heart. Walking through the markets and riding in the subway,
we can be close to the reality. We are moving through various
states of reality during the day.
- Herman
Rednick
A monk asked Joshu, "What is the
meaning of Bodidharma's coming to China?" Joshu said,
"The oak tree in the garden.""
"A monk asked Zhaozhou, "What is the living meaning of Zen?."
Zhaozhou said,
"The cypress tree in the yard."
- Case 37 from the Mumonkan (Wumenguan) Collection of Zen Koans
The Oak Tree in the Courtyard
Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual,
cognitive, and even
spiritual satisfaction.
- Edward O. Wilson
What could be more
ordinary than the cypress tree which the
monk passes each day as he meditates? Is it this everyday,
ordinary thing which is to be for him the embodiment of
enlightenment? But then that’s exactly the point: it is the
everyday thing, the paradox of everyday life, which becomes
the magic window, as it were, into What Is.
- Whitney
Roberson
The first western gardens were those in
the Mediterranean basin. There in the desert areas stretching from
North Africa to the valleys of the Euphrates, the so-called cradle of civilization, where
plants were first
grown for crops by settled communities, garden enclosures were also
constructed. ... Gardens
emphasized the contrast between two separate worlds: the outer one where nature
remained
awe-inspiringly in control and an inner artificially created sanctuary, a refuge for man
and
plants from the burning desert, where shade trees and cool canals refreshed
the spirit and ensured growth."
- Penelope Hobhouse, Gardening Through the Ages,
1992, p. 11.
I see humanity now as one vast plant,
needing for its highest fulfillment only love, the natural blessings
of the great outdoors, and intelligent crossing and selection. In the span of my
own lifetime I have
observed such wondrous progress in plant evolution that I look forward optimistically to a
healthy,
happy world as soon as its children are taught the principles of simple and rational
living.
We must return to nature and nature's god.
- Luther Burbank, 1849-1926. Luther Burbank was a plant breeder,
botanist, and free thinker.
He lived in Santa Rosa,
California.
Inside each one of us is a beautiful
flower garden.
This is the garden of the soul. With each lesson
we learn, the garden grows. As we learn together,
our individual gardens form a tranquil paradise.
- Sri Chinmoy
"In
the places that call me out, I know I'll recover my wordless childhood
trust in the largeness of life and its willingness to take me in."
- Barbara Kingsolver
The great need of our time is for people to
be connected to spirit;
for people to be connected to a core of feeling in themselves that
makes their lives vital and full of meaning, that makes life a
mystery evermore to be uncovered.
- Harold Stone, Sandplay
Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer
and then you find there is nothing in it.
- James Gibbons Huneker
Gardening often straightens the
body and aligns the spirit.
There is not much to say
about the "Unknown."
To dig is to discover.
A garden is quite ordinary,
yet still sacred.
Remember that the River of Forgetfulness flows
by the Elysian Fields.
When the Divine knocks, don't send a
prophet to the door.
Inside the gardener is the spirit of the
garden outside.
- Michael P. Garofalo, Pulling
Onions
There is a theology to gardening that few
of us consider, but to understand this theology means
relinquishing much control - our arsenal of books, techniques, tools, chemicals,
fertilizers, fancy
hybrids, and expectations. Yet, that is exactly what we must do if we are to fully
embrace a more
spiritual form of gardening. As a part of Nature we must learn to enter our garden
as if
it were truly sacred, we must learn to enter with humility.
- Christopher and Tricia McDowell, The Sanctuary Garden,
1998, p. 17
Cortesia Sanctuary and
Center
Respect the old and cherish the
young.
Even insects, grass and trees you must not hurt.
- Ko Hung
Gardening is an active participation
in
The deepest mysteries of the universe.
- Thomas Berry
Those who are willing to be
vulnerable
move among mysteries.
- Theodore Roethke
Everything that slows us down and forces
patience, everything that sets
us back into the slow circles of
nature, is a help.
Gardening is an instrument of grace.
- May Sarton
Kiss of the sun for pardon.
Song of the birds for mirth.
You're closer to God's heart in a garden
than any place else on earth.
- Dorothy Frances Gurney
We have learned that more of the
"earth-earthiness" would
solve our social problems, remove many isms from our
vocabulary, and purify our art. And so we often wish that
those who interpret life for us by pen or brush would
buy a trowel and pack of seeds.
- Ruth R. Blodgett (1883-), The House Beautiful (March
1918)
Image consciousness and gardening
don't mix. Image consciousness
and any enterprise where the soul is involved don't mix. But isn't that
the beginning of understanding spirituality. To be image conscious
keeps our guard up. It keeps our judgments - about ourselves, others,
and God - sharply defined, for we want to make sure we play the right
notes. Thus, we are unable to hear the music, which is another way
of saying we are unable to receive, to welcome, to embrace."
- Terry Hershey, Soul Gardening, p. 99
Hildegaard of Bingen was a twelfth-century
mystic, composer, and
author of a theology that knitted together nature and spirit, cosmos
and soul. She described the Holy Spirit as the Greening Power
of
God. Just as plants are greened, so we are as well. As we grow up,
our spark of life continually shines forth. If we ignore this spark, this
greening power, we become thirsty and shriveled. And if we respond
to the spark, we flower. Our task is to flower, to come into full blossom
before our time comes to an end.
- Lauren Artress, Walking
a Sacred Path
He who cultivates a garden, and
brings to perfection flowers and fruits
cultivates and advances at the same time his own nature."
- Ezra Weston, 1845
It is one of the first days
of Spring, and I sit once more in the old garden
where I hear no faintest echo of the obscene rumbling of London streets
which are yet so little away. Here the only movement I am conscious of
is that of the trees shooting forth their first sprays of bright green, and
of the tulips expanding the radiant beauty of their flaming globes, and the
only sound I hear is the blackbird's song -- the liquid softly gurgling notes
that seem to well up spontaneously from an infinite joy, an infinite peace,
at the heart of nature and bring a message not from some remote Heaven
of the Sky or Future, but the Heaven that is Here, beneath our feet, even
beneath the exquisite texture of our own skins, the joy, the peace, at
the Heart of the Mystery which is Man. For man alone can hear the
Revelation that lies in the blackbird's song.
- Havelock Ellis, Impressions and
Comments, 1918
"The All is One"
The natural world is subject as well as
object. The natural world
is the maternal source of our being as earthlings and life-giving
nourishment of our physical, emotional, aesthetic, moral and
religious existence. The natural world is the larger sacred
community to which we belong. To be alienated from this
community is to become destitute of all that makes us
human. To damage this community is to diminish
our own existence.
- Thomas Berry
Almost any garden, if you see it at just the right moment,
can
be confused with paradise.
- Henry Mitchell
Thinking the deed, and not the creed,
Would help us in our utmost need.
- Henry W. Longfellow, 1807 - 1882
So will I build my
altar in the fields,
And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be,
And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields
Shall be the incense I will yield to thee.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Live with intention. Walk to the
edge. Listen hard. Practice wellness.
Play with abandon. Laugh. Choose with no regret. Continue to learn.
Appreciate your friends. Do what you love. Live as if this is all there
is.
- Mary Anne Hershey
Man’s heart away
from nature becomes hard.
- Standing Bear
The abode of God, too, is wherever is
earth and sea and air, and sky and virtue.
Why further do we seek the Gods of heaven?
Whatever thou dost behold and whatever thou dost touch, that is Jupiter.
- Lucan, 39 - 65 A.D.
Quotes for Gardeners
Quotes, Sayings, Proverbs, Poetry, Maxims, Quips,
Cliches, Adages, Wisdom
A Collection Growing to Over 2,700 Quotes, Arranged by 130 Topics
Many of the Topics also have Recommended Readings and Internet Links.
Compiled by Michael P. Garofalo
We may have to learn again the mystery of
the garden: how its external
characteristics model the heart itself,
and how the soul is a garden
enclosed, our own perpetual paradise where we can be
refreshed and restored.
- Thomas Moore, The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life
Cultivate the garden within.
What was Paradise? but a garden, an
orchard of trees and herbs,
full of pleasure and nothing there but delights.
- William Lawson
Advice for Living the Good Life
Crape myrtle, brilliant red, bursting
forth;
Hiding the garden.
Some days, only the Garden, entire, serene;
Yet, hiding from sight, shy, single plants.
Seeing Both, seldom, but as One:
Sweat poured from my startled brow,
Dripping on the dry earth,
And all became Sunshine
And shadows of surprise unraveling.
- Michael P. Garofalo, Cuttings
"Then I was standing on
the highest mountain of them all, and round
about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood
there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for
I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit,
and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being.
An I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops
that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the
center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of
one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy."
- Black Elk Speaks, The
Great Vision, 1932, p. 36
Beyond its practical aspects, gardening -
be it of the soil or soul - can lead us on a
philosophical and spiritual exploration that is nothing less than a journey into the
depths of our own sacredness and the sacredness of all beings. After all, there must
be something more mystical beyond the garden gate, something that
satisfies the soul's attraction to beauty, peace, solace, and celebration.
- Christopher and Tricia McDowell, The Sanctuary Garden,
1998, p.13
Cortesia Sanctuary
and Center
By a garden is meant mystically a place of
spiritual repose, stillness, peace, refreshment, delight.
- John Henry Cardinal Newman
Something unknown is doing we
don't know what.
- Arthur Eddington
All spiritual experiences
are sensations in the body. They are
simply a graded series of sensations, beginning with the solidity
of earth and passing gradually, in full consciousness, through
liquidness and the emanation of heat to that of a total vibration
before reaching the Void.
- Sri Anirvan
I do not wish to die -
There is such contingent
beauty in life:
The open window on summer
mornings
Looking out on
gardens and green things growing,
The shadowy cups of rose
flowering to themselves-
Images of time and
eternity-
Silence in the garden and
felt along the walls.
The room is suddenly
filled with sun,
Like a sacrament one can
never be
Sufficiently thankful
for. Door ajar,
The eye reaches across
from one
Open window to another,
eye to eye,
And then the healing
spaces of the sky ......
- Alfred Leslie Rowse, 1903-
The garden must first be prepared in
the soul first
or else it will not flourish.
- Proverb from England
This cabbage, these carrots, these potatoes, these onions ... will
soon become me.
Such a tasty fact!
- Mike Garofalo, Pulling Onions
If we analyze the operations of scenes of
beauty upon the mind, and
consider the intimate relation of the mind
upon the nervous system
and the whole physical economy, the action and reaction which
constantly occur
between bodily and mental conditions, the reinvigoration
which results from such scenes is
readily
comprehended .... The
enjoyment of scenery employs the mind without fatigue and yet
exercises it;
tranquilizes it and yet enlivens it; and thus, through the
influence of the mind over the
body
gives the effect of refreshing
rest and reinvigoration to the whole system.
- Frederick Law Olmstead, The Yosemite Valley and Mariposa
Big Trees, 1865
How true it is that, if we are
cheerful and contented, all nature smiles,
the air seems more balmy, the sky clearer, the earth has a brighter green,
the flowers are more fragrant and the sun, moon, and stars all appear
more beautiful, and seem to rejoice with us.
- Orison Swett Marden
When men do not love their hearth,
nor reverence their thresholds,
it is a sign that they have dishonoured both ... Our God is a house-hold God,
as well as a heavenly one; He has an altar in every man's dwelling.
- John Ruskin (1819-1900), The Seven Lamps of Architecture,
1908
Who loves a garden
Finds within his soul
Life's whole;
He hears the anthem of the soil
While ingrates toil;
And sees beyond his little sphere
The waving fronds of heaven, clear.
- Lousie Seymour Jones, Who Loves a Garden
We are not human beings trying to be
spiritual.
We are spiritual beings trying to be human.
- Jacquelyn Small
Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who
made him sees
That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees,
So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray
For the Glory of the Garden, that it may not pass away!
- Rudyard Kipling, The Glory of the Garden
The World is a great mirror. It
reflects back to you what you are.
If you are loving, if you are friendly, if you are helpful, the World will
prove loving and friendly and helpful to you.
The World is what you are.
- Thomas Dreier
Learning how to operate a soul
figures to take time.
- Timothy Leary
Spirituality points, always, beyond:
beyond the ordinary,
beyond possession, beyond the narrow confines of the self,
and - above all - beyond expectations. Because "the
spiritual"
is beyond our control, it is never exactly what we expect.
- Ermest Kurtz and Katherine Ketchman, The Spirituality of
Imperfection
I Welcome Your Comments and Suggestions
The best place to find God is in a garden.
You can dig for him there.
- George Bernard Shaw
Bamboo shadows sweep the stairs
but no dust is stirred;
moonlight reaches to the bottom of the pond
but no trace is left in the water.
- Zenrinkushu
The History of
Gardening and Farming:
A Timeline from Ancient Times to the 20th Century
Are we to look at cherry blossoms
only in full bloom, the moon only when it is
cloudless? To long for the moon while looking on the rain, to lower the blinds
and be unaware of the passing of the spring - these are even more deeply
moving. Branches about to blossom or gardens strewn with flowers are
worthier of our admiration.
- Yoshida Kenko
Each one has his own most real thing.
Mine is the garden.
- Louisa Yeomans King
It must be this rhapsody or none,
The rhapsody of things as they are.
- Wallace Stevens, The Man With the Blue Guitar
Gardening is such a highly individual
are that it is irresistible
to egocentrics ... The word is used in its broadest, most
correct sense and is not to be confused with egoist. It includes
not only those who are normally, naturally self-centered, but
also those who have been rendered self-centered by
circumstances - those who are lonely, timid, shy; those who have
a compulsion to express themselves in some art or other; and,
especially, those who are ostriches, who are only truly happy
when they escape from the bewilderment of daily life by
burying their heads in an interesting, well-ordered, and
preferably beautiful landscape.
- Francis H. Cabot, Chairman of The Garden Conservancy, 1999
Paraphrasing the theories of Taylor Whittle, The Avant Gardener 2/2000
For behold, the kingdom of God is
within you.
- Luke 17:21
Flowers - Quotes for Gardeners
We will endeavour to shew how the
aire and genious of Gardens operat upon
humane spirits towards virtue and sancitie, I meane in a remote, preparatory
and instrumentall working. How Caves, Grotts, Mounts, and irregular
ornaments of Gardens do contribute to contemplative and philosophicall
Enthusiasms; how Elysium, Antrum, Nemus, Paradysus, Hortus, Lucus, &c.,
signifie all of them rem sacram et divinam; for these expedients do
influence
the soule and spirits of man, and prepare them for converse with good
Angells; besides which, they contribute to the lesse abstracted pleasures,
phylosophy naturall and longevitie.
- John Evelyn in a letter to Sir Thomas Browne, 1657
There's nothing much, really, to say.
We're
agog.
- James McManus, Great America
As a plant produces its flower,
so the psyche creates its symbols.
- Carl G. Jung
The Tao exists in the crickets ... in
the grasses ...
in tiles and bricks ... and in shit and piss.
- Chuang-tzu
The Roaring
Stream: A New Zen Reader, p. 117
My task is really not to change
myself
but to become familiar with who I am.
- Maureen Cook
On the first of May, with my comrades
of the catechism class,
I laid lilac, chamomile and rose before the altar of the Virgin,
and returned full of pride to show my "blessed posy." My
mother laughed her irreverent laugh and, looking at my bunch
of flowers, which was bringing the may-bug into the sitting-room
right under the lamp, she said: "D'you suppose it wasn't
already blessed before?"
- Colette, Sido, 1922
Belief in the supernatural
reflects a failure of the imagination.
- Edward Abbey
Dropped off
bones and soul -
weeding new cuttings.
- Mike Garofalo, Cuttings
Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery,
but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between.
- Diane Ackerman
Everything in the world has a hidden
meaning ....
Men, animals, trees, stars, they are all hieroglyphics.
When you see them you do not understand them.
You think they are really men, animals, trees, stars.
It is only years later that you understand.
- Nikos Kazantzakis
Sitting in a room staring at a
pressed plant is not always the full
story. There is a garden out there where the plant lives. The
intellectual pursuit is coming full circle to what resides at the
center. Life is not one or the other, but both. That which makes
us a whole by uniting all parts is the same, whatever the naming
of the unnameable. Gardeners have always known the
spiritual connection that resides in the center.
- Gene Bush, Munchkin Nursery and Gardens
The cosmos is divine.
The earth is sacred.
In our gardens, Lord Ganesha sends
His power through fruits
and vegetables, the ones that grow above the ground, to permeate
our nerve system with wisdom, clearing obstacles in our path
when eaten. The growers of them treat it like they would
care for Ganesha in His physical form.
- Hindu Deva Shastra, verse 438, Nature Devas
To affect the quality of the day,
that is the highest of arts.
- Henry David Thoreau
A garden is a private world or it is
nothing.
- Eleanor Perenyi
Crouchers move through a garden at a
stoop: naming, gasping, horraying,
admiring or coveting plants; Gapers saunter, smiling or sighing at what they find,
succumbing to an intangible beatitude that takes them for a brief escape into another
dimension. Both sorts of gardener are besotted; both get their hands dirty; think
and
talk gardening; but on the threshold of another's garden,
each use a different set of whiskers.
- Mirabel Osler, Gapers and Crouchers
Contemplate the workings of this world,
listen to the words of the
wise, and take all that is good as your own. With this as your base,
open your own door to truth. Do not overlook the truth that is right
before you. Study how water flows in a valley stream, smoothly
and freely between the rocks. Also learn from holy books and
wise people. Everything - even mountains, rivers, plants,
and trees - should be your teacher.
- Morihei Ueshiba (1883 - 1969), founder of Aikido
Expect your every need to be met,
expect the answer to every problem,
expect abundance on every level, expect to grow spiritually.
- Eileen Caddy
When I dance, I dance, when I sleep,
I sleep; yes, and when I walk
alone in a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts drift to far-off matters
for some part of the time, for some other part I lead them back
again to the walk, the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude,
to myself.
- Montaigne
When Lawrence first found a gentian, a big
single blue one, I remember feeling
as if he had a strange communion with it, as if the gentian yielded up its blueness,
its very essence, to him. Everything he met had the newness of a creation
just that moment come into being.
- Frieda Lawrence writing about her 1912 honeymoon with D. H. Lawrence
Bad gardens copy, good gardens create, great
gardens transcend.
What all great gardens have in common are their ability to pull the
sensitive viewer out of him or herself and into the garden, so
completely that the separate self-sense disappears entirely, and at
least for a brief moment one is ushered into a nondual and timeless
awareness. A great garden, in other words, is mystical
no matter what its actual content.
- Ken Wilbur, Grace and Grit, 1991
The flowing waters carry the image of
the peach
blossoms far, far away;
There is an earth, there is a heaven, unknown to men.
- Li Po, Answering a Question in the Mountains
Learn to get in touch with the
silence within yourself
and know that everything in this life has a purpose.
There are no mistakes, no coincidences. All events
are blessings given to us to learn from.
- Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
He who experiences the unity of life
sees his own Self
in all beings, and all beings in his own Self, and looks
on everything with an impartial eye.
- Bhagavad Gita
My spirit was lifted and my soul
nourished by my time in the garden.
It gave me a calm connection with all of life, and an awareness that remains
with me now, long after leaving the garden.
- Nancy Ross
How is it that I have got to think of
caring for Nature and Art
of all kinds as a real religion? I never can, never shall see it is
more religious to sit in a hot church trying to listen to a
commonplace sermon than looking at a beautiful sky,
or the waves coming in.
- Kate Greenaway in a letter to John Ruskin in 1898
When humans participate in ceremony, they
enter a sacred space.
Everything outside of that space shrivels in importance. Time
takes on a different dimension. Emotions flow more freely. The
bodies of participants become filled with the energy of life, and
this energy reaches out and blesses the creation around them.
All is made new; everything becomes sacred.
- Sun Bear
For the time being, well past noon, God, I ask that you above all leave me
alone, that I might just sit here in
the leaf shade, beside this wall with its
swallow-thrown shadows and the easy,
unmended thoughts time affords
me: these solid forms of pots, flush
with zinnias, and the sun patch fading
where the grass snake glides
unknotted.
a hallow tree
the beginning
of dusk
- Michael McClintock, Afternoon Garden
A morning glory at my window
satisfies me
more than the metaphysics of books.
- Walt Whitman
What is hidden from you will be
disclosed to you.
For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed.
Split a piece of wood; I am there.
Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.
- The Gospel of St. Thomas
Gardening is a
labour full of tranquility and satisfaction; natural
and instructive, and as such contributes to the most serious
contemplation, experience, health and longevity.
- John Evelyn, 1666
Ordinary time:
If you have a hoe, we will work together.
If you don't have a hoe, water.
Sermon time:
If you have a hoe, She will give you another.
If you don't have a hoe, She will take it away.
- Mike Garofalo, Cuttings
The sacred tree, the sacred stone are
not adored as stone or tree; they
are worshipped precisely because they are hierophanies, because
they show something that is no longer stone or tree but sacred, the
ganz andere or
'wholly other.'
- Mircea Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries
But because truly being here
is so much; because everything
here
apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some
strange way
keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.
Once for each thing. Just once; no more. And we too,
just once. And never again. But to have been
this once, completely, even if only once:
to have been at one with the earth, seems beyond undoing.
- Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, 9th, 1923
Translated by Stephen Mitchell
I could make a strong case, if not
conclusive, case for the idea that
plants are more intelligent than people - more beautiful, more pacific,
more ingenious in their ways of reproduction, more at home in their
surroundings, and even more sensitive. Why, we even use flower-
forms as our symbols of the diving when the human face reminds
us too much of ourselves -- the Hindu-Buddhist mandala, the
golden lotus, and the Mystic Rose in Dante's vision of Paradise."
- Alan Watts, Cloud Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown, 1968, p.
112
One real world is enough.
- Santayana
The greatest delight which the fields
and woods minister is the suggestion
of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone
and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
Our original nature is, in highest
truth, devoid of any atom of objectivity.
It is void, omnipresent, silent, pure; it is glorious and mysterious peaceful
joy -- and that is all. Enter deeply into it by awakening yourself.
- Huang Po
It is only necessary to behold the
least fact or phenomenon,
however familiar, from a point a hair's breadth aside from
our habitual path or routine, to be overcome, enchanted by
its beauty and significance ... To perceive freshly, with
fresh senses is to be inspired.
- Henry David Thoreau
A callused palm and dirty fingernails
precede a Green Thumb.
Complexity is closer to the Truth.
Sitting in a garden and doing nothing is high art everywhere.
Does a plum tree with no fruit have Buddha Nature? Whack!!
The only Zen you'll find flowering in the garden is the Zen you bring there each
day.
Dearly respect the lifestyle of worms.
All enlightened beings are enchanted by water.
Becoming invisible to oneself is one pure act of gardening.
Priapus,
lively and naughty, aroused and outlandish, is the Duende
de el Jardin.
Inside the gardener is the spirit of the garden outside.
Gardening is a kind of deadheading - keeping us from going to seed.
The joyful gardener is evidence of an incarnation.
One purpose of a garden is to stop time.
Leafing is the practice of seeds.
- Michael P. Garofalo, Pulling Onions
There is not a single colour hidden
away in the chalice of a flower,
or the curve of a shell, to which some subtle sympathy with the
very soul of things, my nature does not answer.
- Oscar Wilde
Links and References
Four Essays on
Spirituality and Gardening
Gardening and Spirituality. Essay by Mike Garofalo.
Global Balance Institute -
Spirituality
The Mental and Spiritual Aspects of Gardening: Recommended Reading
The Mysticism of Annie
Dillard's "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek." 35K
Nature Mysticism. By Larry
Gates. 31K.
Nature
Mysticism By Mike King.
150K+. Outstanding!!
Nature Mysticism. By Michael P. Garofalo.
Quotations, poems, sayings, links, bibliography. 50K+
Places of Peace and Power: The Sacred Site Pilgrimage of Martin Gray. Very interesting Links section,
outstanding bibliography,
and fine photographs.
Reading to Lift the Gardener's Spirits
Religions of the World and
Ecology Harvard University Center for the
Study of World Religions
The Sentient
Garden Jim Nollman, Why We Garden
A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues: The Uses of Philosophy in Everyday
Life.
By Andre Comte-Sponville. Translated by Catherine Temerson. A
Metropolitan
Owl Book, New York, Henry Hold and Co., 1996. Index, chapter notes, 352
pages.
ISBN: 0805045562. A wise and very readable discussion of the great
virtues:
politeness, fidelity, prudence, temperance, courage, justice, generosity,
compassion,
mercy, gratitude, humility, simplicity, tolerance, purity, gentleness, good
faith, humor,
and love.
Soul of the Garden
Photographs, ideas, observations, and links from Tom Spencer, host of West Texas
Gardener on KLRU, and Greenthumb Hour on radio.
Spirituality and
Religion Links Edited by Steve Schlarb.
Spirituality and Concerns of the Soul
Simplicity and the Simple Life
Pulling
Onions
Quips and Observations by Michael P. Garofalo
Haiku Poetry - Links and References
Cliches for Gardeners and Farmers
The
History of Gardening Timeline
From
Ancient Times to the 20th Century
Short Poems and Haiku by Michael P. Garofalo
Quotes for Gardeners
Quotes, Sayings, Proverbs, Poetry, Maxims, Quips,
Cliches, Adages, Wisdom
A
Collection Growing to Over 2,700 Quotes, Arranged by 130 Topics
Many
of the Documents Include Recommended Readings and Internet Links.
Compiled
by Michael P. Garofalo
Distributed on the Internet by Michael P. Garofalo
I Welcome Your Comments, Ideas, Contributions, and Suggestions
E-mail Mike Garofalo in Red Bluff, California
A Short Biography of Mike Garofalo
Spirituality and Mysticism - Quotes for Gardeners
Part II, Version 4.7
The History of Gardening Timeline
Cloud Hands: Taijiquan and Qigong
Spirituality and Gardening, Part I