“No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden…But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.”
—Thomas Jefferson to Charles W. Peale, August 20, 1811. *

Twenty-six years ago, with that tendril of green hope that sprouts in the young, I set out to change the world. Signing up to be a “Volunteer in Mission,” I said I’d go anywhere on earth. I was nursing a broken heart and was confident the best cure was to get the heck out of Dodge, get a new stamp in my passport, and have a foreign address to call home. I nearly went to Cairo, Egypt or Chaing Mai, Thailand, but the U.S. bombed Libya, so suddenly, I was a candidate for a new position, one never tried before, in the UK, in the Time for God program. I ended up getting the position, ended up moving to Walsall, England, in the West Midlands.

Since this occurred pre-internet, I had to go to the library to find a map that listed “Walsall.” I learned one fact about the town: it was where the Queen of England had her saddles made. Walsall happened to be ten miles from where my great, great grandparents came from, before moving to America in the mid-1800’s.
I arrived in Walsall on September 5th, to live with a family of four. That first Sunday was sunny and bright, not like I’d imagined England would be. I relaxed in the garden with the family: Mike, Nora, and their kids. The kids rollicked around on the soft warm grass. Looking out the window of my room there, I was incredulous at the gardens along the road where I lived. A bridle path ran nearby, and at night, I could see a red fox running down the path.
As I got acclimated to work in Walsall, and made friends, when I’d say, “Oh, what a beautiful yard,” they’d simply smile, like they smiled at my loudness, my bright red coat, my ineptitude with counting out British coins.
When I’d say to Mike and Nora, “The kids are out playing in the yard,” Nora corrected me, “We think of a yard, like Scotland Yard. Here we’d say the kids are in the garden.”

Their garden was full of flowers, lush grass, trees with green mossy trunks. The gardens were small, by Illinois standards, but they were meticulous and beloved. Plus, I couldn’t believe the silence: no crickets, locusts, frogs, toads filling up the night air, and no screens on the windows to keep bugs out.

Gardens are such a place for the soul, a place of contemplation, a place of delight, hearkening back to Eden. Like Jefferson, our spirits can feel revitalized and young in the garden.  I began to see how crass we Americans are, and how we are perceived. In Illinois, we have large expanses of grass we call yards, into which we plant a few tulips here, a daffodil over there, and we call it good. Maybe a hosta or two grows for good measure, left from the person who lived in the house before us. More often than not, our yards are not the cultivated creations seen in England. It’s part of our ethos, “More is more,” and the more we talk about is grass, lots and lots of it.

Having had a grandfather who was a farmer, whose hands, skin tone, and green thumb I inherited, I decided that when I returned to the U.S., I would cultivate a garden, wherever I lived. I ended up marrying an American in a Walsall Church, before I left England. Our wedding photos were taken in torrential rain at the Walsall Arboretum, an old Victorian park, which had once been a forest and royal hunting grounds. Standing in that deluge, sinking in the mud, maybe is what love is, afterall, keeping one another upright in whatever downpour comes along?
We move into my husband’s grandparent’s home in Illinois, south of Chicago. It has a large back yard we slowly convert into a garden. When Mike, Nora, and the kids come to see us one August, they ask what machine is going, constantly, creating a sickening hum.
“Is it something from the hospital nearby?”they ask, “Some kind of machine?” Finally I realize what they mean, because I don’t hear anything. I realize they are referring to the locusts in the maple trees in our yard.
“That sound’s from bugs,” I say casually, since this sound has been part of my life most of my life.
“Bugs?” Nora asks grimmacing, “What kind of bugs? How many are there? How big are they?”
“Well, here, there must be millions, and they are BIG,” I say, not realizing how shocking this news might be, “but you’ll never see them, you’ll only hear them.”
Cue the large locust to fall out of the tree. Usually I just find the empty casing, the locust’s brown crusty shell, clinging to tree bark. But here, for one of the first times in my life, upside down on the pavement, falls a fleshy locust.
“Here’s one!” I say, picking it up for my British family to see. Quickly we go inside, out of our yard, out of the vibrating, hot August air.

Now we live further out. One year, my husband uses a tractor and my brother-in-law to plant over 1,000 naturalizing daffodil bulbs. He plants vast kidney-shaped beds of praire forbs, which turn into seas of yellow by August. We contend with herds of deer that munch most things, especially roses and hybrid daylilies. I plant perennials by our front walk.
Our kids’ favorite experience of spending time with Mike and Nora’s kids is playing American football with one of their sons.

And, as  two members of our British “family” came to visit last spring, .  I bought tea, but they preferred coffee, which was funny, since coffee was considered something so American, when I lived with them long ago. I showed them our efforts to tame this wild yard into a “proper” garden.
Last summer, a British woman new to our community stopped by our house. She took one look at our walkway and said, “This looks like a proper English garden.”
“Really?” I ask, “Really?” eager to believe it was true, eager to believe our yard was beginning to transform.

*Lipscomb, Andrew A. and Albert Ellery Bergh, ed. The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 13. Washington D.C.: Issued under the auspices of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association of the United States, 1903-04, p. 79

*Time for God is a charitable organization based in the UK. It recruits “high calibre and dedicated volunteers matching them to full-time, long-term placements.”  Time for God aims “to enable people to grow professionally, personally, and spiritually through full-time voluntary service.”

As a fan of both TED and theologian Karen Armstrong’s, tomorrow will be a big day for both! TED is helping relaunch the Charter for Compassion. Here’s how it’s going down tomorrow….

Date:  March 22, 2012

Location: Live webcast on Charter for Compassion website and Facebook page

Time: 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time (PDT)

7:00 p.m. Event starts

7:05 p.m. Launch of the Greater Vancouver Compassion Network (GVCN),

presented by Alisdair Smith, GVCN Chair

7:15 p.m. Karen Armstrong: “What is Religion?” (45 Minutes)

8:00 p.m. Karen Armstrong: “State of the Charter for Compassion” (20 minutes)

8:20 p.m. Q & A with Karen Armstrong

Simon Fraser University is hosting a series of events this month called  Twelve Days of Compassion with Karen Armstrong

Enjoy!

It takes me a long time to drop a grudge. I nurse a grudge until it’s powdery and brittle in my hands, like ancient parchment. Why? Because it is ancient news, yet I want to learn its lessons, I hold on hoping there’s still something to learn from it. However, I’m trying to get better at this, trying to “let go” earlier than later.

In my spiritual life, I seek to be nimble.  Since I live in an old circus mecca I have friends who do the trapeze, and I love to watch them.  They have to learn to let go, if they’re ever going to fly through the air with the greatest of ease. Letting go. It’s how it’s done. Every world religion has “letting go” in its tenets. There’s something to it.

So, in honor of letting go, like releasing the 50 lbs. trapeze bar to swing on its own, I will release Snarky, and what I think of Snarky, here. Some writers I know and admire have gotten deep criticisms from people you’d assume were above the fray, you’d assume these critics would not drop mean and low. However, these writers have been criticized in mean and low ways. Interestingly, the term “snarky”  comes to mind. Snarky is a portmanteau, a blend of “snide” and “remark” and I’m a bit amazed by the number of people who think “snarky” is a good thing. It’s not. It’s a cover up for mean, and it’s different from “open” and “direct.” Open and direct people are honest, but snarky has an agenda, an old bone to pick. Snarky is something different.
One writing friend writes op/eds, and we know she’s gonna get creamed, because some of the op/eds she writes are on sites that allow anonymous comments. She doesn’t read them. That’s a given.

I’m talking about the snarky remarks that come from good people who sit on the sidelines. It’s like me yelling out comments to my friends doing the trapeze, “Straighten your arms,” or “your toes weren’t pointed on that toss.” No. If I am not brave enough to climb that gynormous ladder and fly through the air, then I have opted out of my chance to be a critic. Why? Because I am not summoning the courage to do what they are doing. Likewise, I tire of armchair critics. For example,  I’ve seen friends who try to urge the slow train that is the church into the modern age of social media, in all its various forms. They’ve taken more than enough grief for it.
Snarky? I’m not buying. I’m not going for it. Snarky is a bad tux rental, or bowling shoes, snarky needs to be sent back from whence it came.

I have a friend who, years ago, walked out of a bowling alley wearing the bowling shoes she had rented. They were old school bowling shoes, very cool looking, and she wanted them for everyday wear. She wore them home, wore them around the house, until her father saw the big “8″ on the back of them. He was livid. He was not amused. He sent her back to the bowling alley immediately. She had to tell the guy behind the counter, “Uh, these are yours.”

As the church, that’s what we need to do with snarky, with snide remarks, that are made “in jest,” but actually hurt and sting those who receive them. We need to confront them, turn them back in to the owner. I appreciate honesty. I have trouble with snarky, which is meanness dressed up in rental clothing.
Those who embrace snarky say it feels like “liberation.” Well, yes. Getting things off your chest can feel liberating. But, I think of what I tell my children, if you’re going to say something you’re unsure of, ask yourself:

*Is it true?

*Is it kind?

Mostly, with people who refer to themselves as snarky, I do want to know what bone they want to pick. Is “snarky” the way they tell others, “I have an edge?” If so, is it an edge this person is working to smooth out, or hone to sharpness?