The private garden is a microcosm for everything that happens in the larger world.
With passion, warmth, and understanding, the Masers connect a simple personal action — tending the home garden — to larger issues. They guide us through four garden gates: Ecological Consciousness, Social Consciousness, Personal Consciousness, and Spiritual Consciousness. The World is in My Garden includes simple exercises and profound insights that teach us a more balanced way of life.
Excerpt From the Book Chapter 2: The Gateway of Ecological Consciousness
Because those whoenter my garden through the gate of Ecological Consciousness are often "ecocentric" and out of touch with the soul of humanity, it is important to realize that humanity is an inseparable part of Nature. It is no accident, therefore, that ecology (which represents Nature) and economy (which represents humanity) both have the same Greek root oikos, a house. Ecology is the knowledge or understanding of the house. Economy is the management of the house. And it is the same house.
Although a house divided against itself cannot long stand, it has been the continuing assumption of our society that if we manage the parts right, the whole will come right. Yet, while evidence to the contrary now comes from all directions, our systems of knowledge, governance, and management are still structured around this assumption.
"Call a thing immoral or ugly, soul-destroying or a degradation of man, a peril to the peace of the world or to the well-being of future generations," wrote economist E. F. Schumacher, "as long as you have not shown it to be 'uneconomic' you have not really questioned its right to exist, grow, and prosper." Schumacher's words point to the untenable divisiveness that weakens the house inhabited equally by ecology and economy. The question, therefore, is how do we heal the current division in the house shared by ecology and economy in all its various scales from the personal to the global? The answer, I would suggest, can be found in gardening.
Gardening Changed the World
Every new concept begins with a majority of one, including a garden.
Standing in the early morning sun, feeling its gathering warmth caress my body, I am surrounded by dancing colors as the flowers in my garden nod and sway in the teasing breeze of June. I love my garden with its ever-changing combination of hues, scents, flavors, textures, and shapes.
Working in my garden gives me a spiritual ground. My garden is a place to keep the accelerating pace of life and its increasingly fragmentary activity in balance with the solitude required by my soul as I struggle to cope within a society that seems to be rapidly losing touch with its sense of morality. Was there, I wonder, also a time in the far-distant past when the tempo of life's flow andebb seemed to pound with disquieting force on the gate to the heart of the primitive human being, in which is secreted the stillness of peace? Was that when the first flower was consciously planted in a particular place to commemorate the inner stillness that was being assaulted by the outer world? Did planting that first flower constitute the birth of gardening as a conscious act of human love that fulflilled a void in the human soul? Was it a practical act or the soul's need to create a small corner of beauty and harmony? If it was the latter, Ralph Waldo Emerson would have approved, because he counseled that we should "never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful, for beauty is God's handwriting—a wayside sacrament."
With the planting of that first flower, I can in my mind's eye see the gentle touch of woman extending spiritual beauty and compassion into the dangers of a harsh world beyond the family fire. And because the first act of gardening altered how people participated with Nature, I wonder how gardening as a specific and practical activity got started. Perhaps it started with comets.
Although the ancient Chinese thought of comets as celestial brooms wielded by the gods to sweep clean the heavens of all evil, author Rebecca McClen Novick has another thought. She likens the 1997 comet, Hale-Bopp, to a time machine taking us back to 2213 BCE, the date of its visit before this one. As we gazed at the comet, we were sharing a common experience with everyone who stopped to watch something rare and beautiful 4,210 years ago.
To see a comet, writes Novick, "is to unite with the mythic history of humanity and ... the genesis of life itself," for many scientists now believe that comets brought water to our world, creating the necessary conditions for the beginning of life. Hence Novick refers to comets as the "cosmic gardeners, tending the flower beds of the stars." When we view a comet, are we really seeing a celestial gardener who brought water to Earth and thus made possible the first garden on this tiny planet suspended in infinite space?
Endorsements Maser makes a compelling case for the importance of maintaining Nature's processes, which ultimately sustain the quality of our life.
—R.S. Whaley, Ph.D., President, College of Environmental Science and Forestry, State University of New York