Hand to Hand, Heart to Heart

"Gardening is an active participation in the deepest mysteries of the Universe." 

Thomas Berry

My favorite poem of all time is "Renascence" by Edna St. Vincent Millay. It was written when she was just a teenager and yet its epic journey takes us from life, to death, and back to life again. The line that touched me the most comes at the end when she speaks of what she has learned:

"I know the path that tells Thy way

Through the cool eve of every day;

God, I can push the grass apart

and lay my fingers on They heart.!"

That line often came back to me in the days when I would be on my knees in my garden, digging a hole and putting a new plant in. Letting the dirt sift through my hands was like feeling Mother Nature's very energy feeding my soul. When I back-filled the hole and patted the plant down to help it establish well, I could feel exactly what the poet meant ... I could feel God's heartbeat in the earth. Sitting back on my heels and looking around me at the trees, the grass, the plants, and the sky, while birds sang to one another and squirrels scampered up and down branches, I knew I was in touch with the powers that be, with Mother Nature, God, The Universe, and all life, hand to hand and heart to heart.

So many years have passed since those days and I am just now finding my way back to that touch, that feeling. Even though my garden in inside rather than out, tiny rather than yard-size, and the dirt comes out of a bag rather than from the earth itself, when I let it run through my fingers I can once again feel the earth's energy. Bag or not, it started out in the ground feeding itself with the lifeblood of nature. As I place the plant in its new pot and pat it down, touching the stem and the roots connects me once again to the heartbeat of God. You can't feel it through the concrete jungle we call civilization. You can't taste it in the processed foods from the supermarket or hear it through ear buds. You have to go out into nature, part the grass, and feel the heartbeat for yourself. 

And so it is.