Sophia Serve

Soul Work and Weed Control

My expert gardener friend will be visiting soon and I look at my own gardens and think: Darn! Where did all those weeds come from? I could get out there and frantically try to dig them out, but I’m in more of an August mind to just let them go. Who says they’re weeds, as another friend recently said to me. They have every right to live, too. If I dig them all out, she wisely pointed out, I’ll destroy the wildflowers that are also there. So, they stay. Uncontrolled. Mathew Fox, not the actor but the theologian, once said, “The opposite of control is celebration.” I decide to celebrate the weeds.

Thinking of weed-control leads me to another conversation I had recently—this time with my son. We were discussing what “control” means and why it’s popped into his consciousness at this time. Is it about “being controlled,” “controlling others,” or wanting to feel some “control” while being surrounded by chaos. I certainly don’t have any answers but I’ve collected some thoughts over the years. We’re living in a techno-controlled world—and we wonder who’s in control of all that information. Governments? The military? A hidden group of rich people with immense power? I read recently that the British learned all about fingerprinting from the Bengalis and then used it to control them—along with others. It’s a reality that GPS radio devices are implanted, not just in animals for ID purposes, but also in people. Lest we veer, here, into conspiracy-theory-land, suffice it to say I have it on “good authority.”

So who’s in control?  And do we choose to live, as Riane Eisler has put it, in a dominator culture with rigid hierarchies and punishments, or a partnership culture where all can flourish? Do we seek power “over” or power “with”?

In the book I’m reading right now by Carolyn Myss called Entering the Castle: An Inner Path to God and Your Soul, tied to St. Teresa of Avila’s The Inner Castle, she talks about chaos and control and how it’s our “soul work” to recognize both. Disruptive behavior creates chaos by which people try to control others or try to control the world. She says, “Ultimately, every act of divine chaos is an attempt to affirm that there is actually a plan for us on Earth.” I’m not saying that earthquakes or hurricanes—or death—are “divine interventions” but I do believe that we live in a divine paradox. It may feel out of control, yet is held for us in such a way that weeds and flowers can grow up together—and both be beautiful. And valued.

My Compliments to the Complements

In one of the many letters Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo, he said: “The laws of colors are unutterably beautiful, just because they are not accidental.”

Whether my friend Sharon, the gardener, planned this duet of violets to pop up on cue in front of her yellow irises, or whether Mother Earth simply provided it, either way, it wasn’t accidental. Spring makes me realize how it complements autumn when our trees turn orange against the bluest of blue skies. Conservatives complement progressives. Tall complements short. Elders complement children. And as Leonardo da Vinci proved, ugliness complements beauty.

What could be more spring-like than yellow and purple? Complementary colors (you know, the ones opposite each other on the color wheel) do amazing things to the eye as well as the soul. It’s why we put red and green together for Christmas. And why Gauguin brushed verdant jungles behind red skin and Jan van Eyck painted his famous fifteenth century Arnolfini Marriage couple with her in a massive green gown against a red paneled wall.  When your eye catches combinations like this it’s what nineteenth century artists called “moral harmonies.”

It took Matisse until the end of his life to realize you don’t control colors. He said it’s the relationships that take charge.

It may take us until the end of our lives to truly value our relationships. We need life-experiences to help us realize that harmony comes from compliments as well as complements—our ability to value the differences in each other and not try to control them or change them. And above all, we begin to catch on to the fact that these “moral harmonies” are never accidental.

How Much of Beauty?

When my friend sent me a multi-colored "Flowers from the Netherlands" e mail attachment I looked around at our Vermont mud and said to my Dutch husband--"Let's go!"

But then our better sense prevailed and we decided to wash the car instead.

Still, the three billion bulbs blossoming over there right now, are pretty tantalizing.

But soon our own snowdrops and hyacinths will be blossoming and I'll forget Holland. Instead, I'll look around and say, "How much of beauty can the heart endure?" Right here!

 

What Tastes Better

What taste's better than summer's first corn on the cob? Today's lunch came from the little stand up the road run by a neighborhood farmer. You help yourself and put your money in a box.

Like most communities nowadays, we have a plethora of farmers' markets. There's no need to push your cart over to the super market's mound of shipped in anything.

My friend Anne recently sent me some work she'd done for a client regarding "clean" foods--foods that enable us to lose weight and live healthier lives. Basically, it's food without a list of ingredients attached--just "real" food. (You've probably seen the T shirt that says: I like butter better than  margarine because I trust cows more than chemists.) Of course it depends on what those cows have been eating or being injected with.

Anne quotes from Tosco Reno's book, The Eat Clean Diet. We'll never feel satisfied by eating sugars--or anything labeled sorbitol, malitol, sucrose, lactose--or chemically altered foods and white flours. Why? Because they're dead. And addictive. You'll only want more.

"Real" foods come from the lower end of the food chain, preferably locally grown. Choose food from the perimeter of your super markets, not from the center aisles.

Tosco says eat six small meals a day and stay away from sodas and juices. Also include protein, protein, protein. Oh, and lots of water.

Anne also includes Michael Pollan's Food Rules, some of which I "lifted" here because these niblets are so wonderful. Buy the book for more.

    Don't eat anything your grandmother wouldn't recognize as food.

    Avoid food products no ordinary person would keep in their pantry.

    Avoid foods that contain more than five ingredients.

    Avoid foods that make health claims.

    Avoid anything that says "lite".

    Eat only foods that have been cooked by humans.

    Avoid food if it comes through the window of your car.

    If it came from a plant, eat it; it if was made in a plant, don't.

 

Real Toads

At one of my several favorite libraries yesterday a book called 100 Essential Modern Poems by Women fell into my hands—as many books seem to do.  Essential poems?

 

I thought essential meant “stuff to keep me alive” like food, water, air, love, friendship. Ah, friendship. Poems are friends. I get it.

 

Over the years I’ve come to call “friends” many of the earlier women, like Emily Dickinson and Elinor Wylie also included in this anthology. Today I skip to the end to see who my new friends might be.  Louise Erdrich, Rita Dove, Caroyn Forché, Heather McHugh, Jane Kenyon, Kay Ryan, Eavan Boland, Ellen Bryant Voight, Louise Glück, Sharon Olds, Marilyn Hacker, Mary Oliver of course.

 

I have a chapter in Questions Writers Ask called “Can I Write Poetry?” It contains hundreds of comments about the craft of writing it. Marianne Moore’s famous quip pops out. “Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads.”

 

Since my real gardens have turned into unappealing grey November stick figure shadows of their former selves, I turn to the imaginary ones “planted” by the editors of 100 Essential…Joseph Parisi and Kathleen Welton.  The poems they selected are essential, they say “because they deal with the most fundamental issues everyone eventually faces and express in unforgettable ways the deepest experiences that make us human: love, friendship, family (bonds and friction), longing and loss, dreams and disappointments, anxiety, suffering, joy and our relation to nature.” 

 

So, I am reminded once again, it is the deepest experiences that make us essential humans, including friction, disappointments and anxiety.

 

They’re all mine. The grey gardens along side the pink primrosed ones.

 

I'll leave you with what one of my essential friends,  Jane Kenyon, said in “Happiness,” (which according to this prolific New Hampshire woman no longer with us, "there is no accounting for.") “It comes even to the boulder/in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,/to rain falling on the open sea,/ to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where Have All (my) Flowers Gone?

While my gardens, admittedly neglected this summer, have morphed mainly to daisy-yellows and a plethora of pink malvas, the flowers from my friend Sharon's garden in Watertown, Massachusetts still flourish. But you should know that Sharon speaks with earth spirits and they obviously help.

Flowers of Venus

(Photo by Carol Frenier)

Yesterday my friend Carol e-mailed me this vibrant iris. She calls each by name. Her garden blooms for Venus—and, now, because of blogging, it blooms here. For all of us. Unlike Carol, I rarely remember plant names but I love them no less. Our more common purple and yellow varieties are spiked here and there by Siberian irises (well, I do know one) which the prior owner left as unfurling flag markers to remind us she was here.

For some reason, maybe because Venus and love are in the air, this June various friends have popped in with white ones and light blue ones. Last weekend I saw a froth of cinnamon mocha latte on a stem. Oh, and my friend Joe has a black iris. I admit, I sink into serious iris envy every time I visit him in June. I often trade iris-laden birthday gifts with Mary Ann, one of my dear and constant Wisconsin friends. Iris mugs, Monet’s iris bags, paintings, jewelry, crafted boxes. For us, irises are a special way of defining our friendship.

When she was able to enjoy them, I gave my friend Lori fat vases full of irises from my garden. She loved them. Lori’s mind and body now weaken and we who call her our friend know she prepares to leave us. She's actually told us so. "I'm going. I'm going."

Romans believed irises purify the air. Frank Waters said, "Breathing is an act of prayer." May Lori’s oxygen last as long as she cares to draw it in. And then, may we gently
     let 
          her 
                 go.

This illustration of three irises can be found on page 148 of Hunab Ku. They're drawn from a Minoan wall mural from around 2000 BC from Knossos, Crete.
Joel and I chose it because it's about "Breathing". We closed that essay with a Pueblo Prayer: "I add my breath to your breath, that our days may be long on the Earth."

Just as the early morning dew caresses the deep purple beard of Carol’s iris, the tears from Lori’s extended family lace our own “falls”—that’s what Carol calls the petals that droop. Grief IS a falling. A falling into a deep purple place. None of us knows how to land or even if we will land.  But I suspect each of us eventually will come to a petal-softened spot of our own choice and time.

In a few days, Carol’s fuzzy bearded flower friends will, like Lori, decide it's time to go. The blossoms of an iris shrink, become exceedingly moist and regardless of their original size or color, through some common telepathy sensed only by these flowers of Venus, they morph into peeled parchment cocoons. Like dripping candles, they all point up.

Lupines

Gardening is a competitive sport in Vermont. Maybe it’s because our growing season is so short (148 days) and because everyone spends long white winter months dreaming of color so when spring finally comes, spades fly.

Prior to moving to Vermont, the only association I had with lupines was from the Monty Python lines our sons continually spouted. Then I began to notice people's June gardens and I fell into serious lupine-envy.

So I bought a couple of various colored varieties, tenderly planted them, watered them, spoke to them. People told me to place the colors apart or they will eventually all become purple. I separated them. They grew.  I thought it was because of my burgeoning gardening skills. I carefully transplanted the babies them into what I call “Lupine Lane” in our south garden. (Next to "Lilac Alley"). This year they jumped the path and there's purple everywhere!

Lupines, I’ve now learned, are a Vermont native and our main highway 89 is lined with them at certain spots.  I have a friend who when she came to interview at our nearby law school, saw the wildflowers along the highway and decided this was the state for her.

You can’t get rid of lupines short of mowing them down, or sending in the goats. They’re drought tolerant and have been described as a self-seeding native. So much for my great gardening skills.

But I don’t care how easy they are to grow. They're magnificent! And they do make a lovely perennial border, as Tony Avent says in a Horticulture Magazine article I read on line today.

Tony calls them baptisia. He plants artemesia nearby to offset the blue with silver. Great idea.

Lupines stand tall to “baptize” us in color and Artemis reminds us to keep our eyes open. Beauty’s all around!

Daffy Down Dilly

Every spring my mother would brew up tender young shoots of rhubarb with sugar and a bit of water and called the tart sauce our “spring tonic.”  “It’s good for your blood,” she’d say. Every family I knew in Wisconsin grew rhubarb—so come April and early May, we were all a little hopped up on rhubarb joy-juice.

Daffodils do that same for me.

They’re a yellow tonic nature brews to chase away winter.

Standing tall on their tubular green stalks, they fill a vase on our kitchen table, some frilly, some fringed, some sturdily plain. But each one seems to know that it’s special. I say to the vase: “Yellow, where have you been all these grey snowy, muddy months?  I’ve missed you!”

“Daffy down dilly has come to town,” as our kids used to chant.  “In a yellow petticoat and a green gown.”

Daffodils are optimistic flowers, the color of hope. They prove, once again, spring follows winter. You can count on it.

(Original watercolor by Julia Blackbourn, 2009.          artemis.artwork@gmail.com)