Walden-at-Hudson - "In Undisturbed Solitude and Stillness."

I'm on the lookout for the perfect chair. To sit in. In my garden. For long periods of time. To contemplate life and the things of the world.

A, not the, chair, seen from the middle of the Jerusalem
cross raised beds the with the herb spiral on the right.

The more I read old Henry (Thoreau) the more I like him and would love to spend a day with him in his own garden around Walden Pond. I like him mostly because he blesses my choice just to sit, in my garden, even though there is much to do - complete fences, build Rublev's composter, plant fruit and nut trees, pick the abundant cucumbers and process them into pickles for winter. But more than the nod he extends to me sitting, he so eloquently describes the why. Sitting in my garden is:- a contemplative act; "the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen;" following an inner compulsion to "read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity."

His genius with words describes this sitting as something very deep, as contemplation. I like that and it's something I am striving to practice, especially as I read more of Richard Rohr and Thomas Keating. Here is Thoreau's description.

 I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. Nay, I often did better than this. There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning,...I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sang around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in  at my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part I minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished. Instead of singing like the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune. As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so had I my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest. My days were not days of the week bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of the clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that "for yesterday, to-day, and tomorrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday, forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing day." This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and the flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and hardly will reprove his indolence. 

- Walden, Henry David Thoreau

I think I'll be doing much sitting during this year of discernment. Sitting in my garden till winter comes, and contemplating this next season of my life. Contentedly so. For I've always seemed to know that it's in the garden, with all humanity, we'll read our fate, see what is before us, and walk into futurity.

Now to find that chair most suited to contemplation.

A Genius of Fertility

"An elderly dame ... dwells in my neighborhood, invisible to most persons, in whose odorous herb garden I love to stroll sometimes, gathering simples and listening to her fables; for she has a genius of unequalled fertility... 

- Walden, Solitude, Henry David Thoreau 

 

Visiting Henry David Thoreau's Walden this month as we travelled through New England has re-inspired me to the potential Walden of my own backyard. I long for that localized "genius of unequalled fertility" which he experienced in Nature around Walden Pond, the garden of his "friend" in whose herb garden he "loved to stroll sometimes, gathering simples." It was here he seemed to touch the Source of all that is, asking "Shall I not have intelligence with the earth?" as one who was "partly leaves and vegetable mould" himself. 

 

My own garden - which I propose to call Walden-on-Hudson - is starting to display faint glimmers of Nature's fertile genius - herbs, fruit trees, chickens, veggies, composting bins, a small pond. 

I find it thrilling to experience that all we need for healthy living is freely given and to be found right outside our doors. It remains only for me to do the meticulous work of system design, followed by the hard work of making the appropriate connections between the multiple design elements, domesticating the ways of fertile Nature into the abundance of a Walden in my own yard. 

And So it Begins....

And so it begins... Sunday was a bitter/sweet passage. Relationships forged over five years will be greatly missed, even as tomorrow comes, like a raincloud, full of promise and surprise. 

And so it begins...the end of my term as minister of Covenant United Methodist Church; my journey from the ordered round of predictable and worthy routines, institutional safe guards and retirement security; from a group think often afraid to risk, into a wilder rhythm of spontaneous adventures and encounters with creative gospel, gloriously grounded in the life giving routine of daily living WITH the earth - watering the alfalfa, harvesting a handful to feed the chickens, collecting their eggs with a grateful heart and enjoying breakfast as the gift of a mutual relationship of caring. To look each avian personality in the eye, welcoming them to shepherd me toward a lifestyle of domesticated wildness connected to the earth and the creativity of engaged fullness. That's my journey beyond Covenant.  

It starts today, with this blog entry typed to a chicken's "song" clucking the arrival of yet another gift outside my open window. Nature's eternal round of fullness in relationship.

"Weary with Absence, I Return to Earth"

Wendell Berry's poem tells it straight!

"I have again come home through miles of sky                                                                                            from hours of abstract talk in the way of modern times                                                                                when humans live in their minds and the world, forgotten, dies into explanations. 

Weary with absence, I return to earth.

...and sink into the ancient happiness of slow work in unhastenable                                                            days and years."                                                                                                                               

 - Wendell Berry, "This Day: Collected and New Sabbath Poems" 1992, VIII 

 My end as pastor of Covenant arrives in just a few weeks. And with Berry I wonder at my own preoccupation with hours and hours of abstract theology and preaching "in the way of modern times," while the "world, forgotten, dies into explanations." Just how effective, or ineffective, have I been to help meet the challenges of our day, never mind just to be? 

 I too am "weary with absence" and with this appointment to a year of discernment intend a "return to the earth." It's time for some intentional Jerusalem-cross-gardening of my own, that gardening "of soil" that promises the "ancient happiness of slow work in unhastenable days and years." 

 

 So it begins. Raised beds, in the shape of a Jerusalem cross, planted to annuals. A herb spiral as guild ("a group of plants harmoniously interwoven into a pattern of mutual support") of cullinary and medicinal plants. An apple tree, marvel of gardening craft with four varieties of apples grafted onto a common rootstock, the tree surrounded by multiple plants serving as bird attractors, insect attractors, grass suppressors, mulch providers, nutrient accumulators, and nitrogen fixers. And chickens. Everyone needs companions and participants for the journey who give and receive in the mutual flow of a caring relationship. 

 And all of it a glorious congregation-of-life in my own backyard wildly dancing with the Christ in the universal pattern of order, disorder, and reorder. 

Joining this dance is perhaps that "ancient happiness of slow work in unhastenable days and years" of which Wendell Berry writes, that "return to earth," arriving as my time of pastoring "in the way of modern times" ends.