Liturgies

Monday, February 10th 2014

LESSONS FROM GUERRILLA GARDENING

By Terry Fitzpatrick

Today I would like to share some of my learnings from Guerrilla Gardening as I feel they connect with today’s Gospel. First, a story …

An old Italian man lived alone in New Jersey . He wanted to plant his annual tomato garden, but it was very difficult work, as the ground was hard.His only son, Vincent, who used to help him, was in prison. The old man wrote a letter to his son and described his predicament:Dear Vincent, I am feeling pretty sad, because it looks like I won't be able to plant my tomato garden this year. I'm just getting too old to be digging up a garden plot. I know if you were here my troubles would be over.. I know you would be happy to dig the plot for me, like in the old days. Love, Papa A few days later he received a letter from his son. Dear Pop, Don't dig up that garden. That's where the bodies are buried. Love, Vinnie At 4 a.m. the next morning, FBI agents and local police arrived and dug up the entire area without finding any bodies. They apologized to the old man and left. That same day the old man received another letter from his son. Dear Pop, go ahead and plant the tomatoes now. That's the best I could do under the circumstances. Love you, Vinnie

By the way, that’s not guerrilla gardening, that’s more orthodox Mafia farming.

For those who may be unfamiliar with the term Guerrilla gardening, basically, it is gardening on land that the gardeners do not have legal right to use, often an abandoned site or area not cared for by anyone. Maybe there is a link to Mafia gardening. The land is usually abandoned or neglected by its legal owner. The land is used to raise plants, frequently focusing on food crops or plants intended to beautify an area. Its growing popularity is having implications for land rights and land reform; it is promoting re-consideration of land ownership in order to reclaim land from perceived neglect or misuse and assign a new purpose to it. If you are interested I invite you to google it and have a look.

Here you may find a you-tube clip of how to make seed bombs which are then thrown on abandoned and neglected land in an attempt to beautify and make productive.

The land at the back of our unit in Kelvin Grove became Prime Guerrilla gardening land, at least in my eyes. I netted off a section between my fence and the building fence to provide a small but substantial (5x15m) garden. It was essential to net for we have a little creature you may have heard of, a possum. There is an abundance of lessons for life in the dealing and living with these cute furry friends.

I am sure most of you have possum stories and maybe a few bush turkey ones as well, but I will not be going there today.

One of the things you have to embrace in Guerrilla gardening right up is that at any time your garden could be pulled down and destroyed if not by the owner, possums or gorillas. It is not your land – you have no tenure. It creates a very strong case of letting go. I can say to myself, “I will put this netting up but by the morning it could all be gone. I will plant this out, but I may never see any fruits of my labour. “But I act in faith; the very act of attempting is success in itself. Most gardeners come to know that. The very act of gardening is letting go of our need to control and losing any expectations of how things will turn out in the end. All our busyness and frantic activity will not hasten the ripening of the fruit or produce the sweet taste of the harvest. We can create the conditions and make sure all the right things are in place, but ultimately it is all in the hands of something much greater and more mysterious than we can ever imagine. My best success stories are often with things I had little to do with. Things that grew up out of their own accord from the compost soil I had produced and placed in the garden. Some of you may have received one of my cucumbers; numerous huge cucumbers – they were such a story. Some may ask were they a success? Some don’t like cucumbers at all, especially out of home-made compost.

I am always amazed that from tiny seeds grow amazing plants. Somehow implanted in this tiny thing is all this genetic coding. With the right conditions it takes off. Life is amazing.

Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist Monk, teaches children by inviting them to take a Sunflower seed. He invites them to plant it and water it regularly and watch it grow, When it reaches full maturity to ask the Sunflower a question, the question being “Do you know sunflower you were once a seed?” and he invites the children to listen closely to the Sunflower’s response. “Oh no! you must be joking, that is not me; I was not a little seed. I am this big beautiful Sunflower, blooming in the sun.”

As it is hard for the Sunflower to believe it was once a seed, so too it is for us to believe we were once a seed, an egg, a baby and there are many things involved in our coming to who we are.

For the Sunflower, Thich Nhat Hanh invites the children to see the rain, the compost, the many other aspects and parts that made the Sunflower. As the Sunflower is not a separate entity, nor are we and like the Sunflower, we are made up of many parts. We are not separate, isolated entities; we are deeply connected to all of life around us and we depend on it and it depends on us for survival. We are all experiencing, as Thich Nhat Hanh calls it – INTERBEING.

I do not exist as a separate entity for in me if you look deeply you will see the cloud, the rain, the wheat, the milk, the cucumbers and the sunshine. I am all this.

I depend on it and it depends on me.

We INTER-ARE, even with possums.

There are many things I have learnt about life by gardening but that whole aspect of doing the work and just trusting and letting go, going with whatever outcome presents. And often for me it has been disappointment, but when success arrives it comes all the more sweetly.

Last week I was reading the front page of the Catholic Leader. I was drawn by the beautiful image of a young family, Tony and Eleanor Angwin with their children Nathaniel and Arielle.

The story was about some of the many difficulties they have experienced as a young family, everything from the premature and complicated births of both their children and the many difficulties arising following that. Tony the husband and father was diagnosed with a rare form of stomach cancer requiring special and ongoing chemotherapy and within a week Eleanor’s father being diagnosed with an incurable form of prostate cancer that has already spread to his bones. Some of Eleanor’s reflections on all these difficulties were that “going through everything we have, we’ve just grown in strength, in trust, in belief that all will be well regardless of what that is. I have come to realize that it’s not in my control, not in Tony’s control and nothing the surgeons will do; it’s not in any of our control. It’s what will be”

Eleanor and Tony have learnt to let go and in peace and equanimity, let life be lived through them.

They are learning and have learnt to embrace today’s Gospel.

Not to worry about what will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?

They have learnt to seek first the presence of the Beloved and like the good gardener to let go of all outcomes, for they have learnt through suffering what the 15th Century Mystic, Julian of Norwich (1342-1416 had learnt – no matter what happens, “All shall be well and shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.”