There are many gardens in this forest. In my wanderings I have traveled far from this place, and I have stumbled across clearings just like this one. In each one there is a garden the exact scale of my own, and in each there are roses, beauty embodied, some in full bloom, others covered in carpets of buds, others weary, unwatered, beaten by the elements, crying out to the emptiness.
I have even had the fortune to meet some of the gardeners of these places. Some have been hard at work, calloused hands continuing to ply the ground, pleading for the earth to give up the invaders, the pests and the weeds. Others have been seated comfortably before immaculate gardens, grateful for the time they have had toiling in this place, admiring the beauty that God has planted there and unbothered by the tiny, unplucked sprouts near the path. They have labored long hours in the garden, and will not rise to tend again. Many of these gardeners speak of their delight at their garden; some even inquired as to the state of my own. It was with shame that I could not reply; I often had little awareness of my own garden or the condition of it. I was content to distance myself from it and assume the best.
However, there were two types of gardens I continued to stumble upon that shook my soul. The one contained a gardener with a set of immaculate shears in their hand, the sharp blade glistening in the sunlight, hacking away at the beauty of the rosebush. I would cry out on its behalf, pleading with them to stop, but they would insist that this garden is not suited for roses, gesturing to the plantings they had found that would suit such a space far better than the roses. I offered my meek protest, aware that I was not tending to my own but certain that the gardener could not re-create such beauty on their own, but to no avail. They insisted on hacking away at the thorny shoots of the rosebush, but lamented that it kept growing back. Some had tried to dig away at the roots, but they found no locus. Unable to kill it, many contented themselves with hacking off whatever appeared aboveground while they tended to other inferior plants of their own choosing. They refused to acknowledge that God had planted the roses, and while I worried of the terror they would confront in their mistake, there was no conversing with them on the subject.
The other type of garden was abandoned, overgrown. Many gardens have multiple paths emanating from them; the best tended have well-beaten paths that lead to the gardens around them, indicating the frequency of visits and the availability of aid. These gardens existed in communion with one another. Another type of garden, like my own, had many paths, none well trodden, as the inhabitant searched wildly for the best path. The path to the gate might be well marked, but the latch was rusty from idleness, the inhabitant often pausing at the gate before returning to the chaos of the forest. This last type had no well-beaten paths, only the soft imprint of old footsteps leading away from the garden they fled many years ago in their youth. They have gone astray, forgetting entirely the beauty within and distancing themselves from the very existence of the garden. Perhaps the memory is too painful, but they prefer to roam the darkness of the canopied forest, opting for the temporary beauty they find, the fleeting sustenance of chaos before shifting to another locale. They have gone astray from the fertile soils of the garden, planting and plucking up wicked weeds, caring little for the impression they leave upon the earth. Their gardens still emit shadows of beauty, from deep within the overgrown chaos of the place. Fences have often collapsed, and while God sustains the barrier between the forest and the garden, there is little else to demarcate the place from the outside world. Perhaps soon God will remove such protection and the place will slip forever into chaos, along with whoever was designed to inhabit the place. Shudders slip south down my spine, and I retreat from such places, searching for joy away from these icy locales.
No comments:
Post a Comment