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| 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.
