What activities do you lose yourself in?

“Well at least it will give you peace of mind” was all I seemed to hear when my first flush of youth was over. “I don’t want peace of mind” I raged inside. I want drama, romance, jealousy, possession, love! I guess you can’t want something you never had and I don’t know if I ever had peace of mind. I was still scared of the dark, scared of silence.

I blanked people who talked about their garden then.  Many seasons later and now I love garden talk, meeting in garden centres, planting bulbs.

When it rains, as it does frequently in Scotland, I like thinking the garden is having a divine wash. I can lose myself for hours in our garden. Adjusting the solar lights to maximise the light when the sky darkens. Pruning, planting, ploughing. Finding metaphors for my actual life.  Finding healing in unexplained places.  Joy in the return of flowers I thought were lost.  Understanding how pruning leads to new growth.

I realised how I had missed all those gardens in the Bible. Apart from the fall in the garden of Eden. That read like my early life on repeat! Listening to the wrong advice. Letting snakes pump up my pride. Never knowing what I had until I lost it.

At our wedding a guest read that epic love poem from Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.

“Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is.

Love is not breathlessness, promulgation is not excitement, it is not the promise of eternal passion. That is just being in love, which any fool can do.

Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Those that truly love have roots that grow towards each other underground, and, when all the pretty blossoms have fallen from their branches, they find that they are one tree and not two.”

I fervently wanted to be that one tree. And in wanting that maturity I grew closer to nature. 

In our first garden we built a pond where many birds used to bathe. I loved feeding the magpies coconut. They went berserk. Only detaching from it if Mr Raven was having a visit. The hierarchy was stark! When a lone magpie visited everyday I wanted it to leave. ‘One for Sorrow’ the nursery rhyme goes. It stayed and we called it ‘Elmo’. One day the magpies were screeching outside. Elmo was dead. It was as if they alerted us so we would bury him. We did. 

I learnt to water during a dry summer as if not to would be a betrayal.

Today the pretty blossom has fallen from our branches but the branches remain strong.  We have the one tree, the joined together roots under Jesus, the true vine. 

Pretty blossom is eye-catching but we want the blessed  fruit of the womb, Jesus. 

The peace and absorption gifted me in the garden has opened up all the gardens of the bible.  The garden of Gethsemane, the garden of the Resurrection when Mary Magdalene meets Jesus.  And knowing the only true lasting peace of mind will be in the last garden, the restoration of Eden.