1992

GARDENING
CROSSING THE BRIDGE OF FAITH

Sitting out here on a limb has been a little lonely sometimes. I am not within a network. So my work has been to relax further and further into my faith, what I know in my heart, and to trust the indications I receive. There have been moments when I have asked about reaching out to you for support and contact. The timing was obviously not right and I suspect my "neediness" was not the level at which we could best exchange. Whatever I came up with for communication, other than ordering, got a "No."

This morning, however, awakened, it seemed, "too early" (by one of my children) and, not pulled by a yearning to be in touch with others, the idea came of writing a letter for Perelandra Voices. "Yes," today it is time!

So, here is my voice. With it I share some of my celebration that as I become more grounded with all of the help you are offering — I am learning to fly, which must be the purpose of being out here on a limb anyway! Thank you all so very much.

Although I was approaching my garden organically and intuitively, in my heart it had become clear that my relationship to the garden was ready for a major change. And then, "Voilà!" The Perelandra Garden Workbook! After some weeks of experiencing this incredible new information weave into my thoughts and feelings, there was nothing to hold me back from jumping directly in, even as I held high regard for the enormity of the leap.

I decided to begin by changing the shape of the original rectangular vegetable garden, establishing the new shape in raised beds and having trees removed which would not enhance the changing energies. Then I would apply my efforts to nourishing my sense and practice of partnership working primarily with the development of soil quality in the next year while the garden would lie fallow.

Spade in hand, and with innocence, conviction and determination, I restructured the raised linear beds into three large concentric beds, then eagerly awaited my husband's supportive response. Well, the first thing he asked me was whether I asked about the shape. Of course I hadn't. I'd jumped into the physical alteration assuming the circle within a circle within a circle was the sensible and rightful form to adopt. My enthusiastic exertions in moving so much soil could not cover the fact that I had not asked. So we stood there together, asked, and received an elaborate, elegant and astounding vision of three concentric pentagons encompassing a circle within a square, bordered on each of the five outer sides by three equilateral triangles. Translating, or better, grounding this vision became my no-going-back walk across the bridge of faith. I was overwhelmed, both by the challenge of the geometric exactitude required of me in the layout and the amount of soil that would have to be moved as this new form reached far out from the recently established concentric circles. In moments of despair and frustration when it seemed too impossible, I found myself calling for the help of Pan and devas. Needless to say, they heard and helped. Miracles of exact geometric shape took form in the soil. I danced in this emerging garden, establishing shape after shape until it was just too cold and I literally ran into a hillside which I was assured — a number of times — would have to be moved.

Then, amazingly, just at the end of winter, we received guidance that we would be moving in 9 to 10 months. In relation to the garden, this felt right immediately. What was happening in my back yard was too "public," because, for my comfort, it is still too personal in its tender infancy to be in unobstructed display on our busy road. Also, my husband and I yearned to be able to offer our own land for a substantial Nature Sanctuary. We had had to "borrow" land from a neighbor because no area on our own 1 and 1/2 acres tested right for a sanctuary.

At the same time, we had invited and planned a garden in partnership with Nature where we knew healing of ourselves and the planet had already begun. For this reason, I saw the future move as a moral dilemma. So I turned again to the deva overseeing this garden which had not yet even been given a name. The direction offered was to close the garden then and seed the soil with grass and clover.

I didn't know how to close a garden, but a moment came when a prayer and a statement of love and intent arose from the depths of my being. The garden was closed in great beauty and intense mutual love. I moved the soil a third time and seeded it.

In the several months following, unexpected opportunities for opening our lives to partnership have appeared. It is very clearly an "in-between" time in our lives which our garden situation symbolizes. We have let go of our garden so that we may open a new one. Here, in the enormous space between outer gardens, what was and what is yet to be, the inner gardens have been opened to partnership. The songs being sung there are beyond words.

— P.J., New York