Connected In

The garden is lush. And parts of it are definitely planted too close. The zucchini is too close to the broccoli; and the broccoli is too close to the cucumbers and the tomatoes.

Interestingly, there are not too close for their own well being. They are too close for me getting between them for picking. Which is interesting to ponder. Plants, in a garden, can grow in closer proximity to each other, and that the spacing listed on the seed packet has more to do with harvesting than it does with growing.

When the ground was bare I would have thought I was leaving scads of room. Even as I didn’t follow the directions, I simply thought that my perception would be spot on.

I spent the morning reading a historic sermon by William Ellery Channing, an early 19th century Unitarian minister. Taking his cue from Ephesians v.1: “Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children,” he maintains that “true religion consists in proposing, as our great end, a growing likeness to the Supreme Being.” That likeness to God, he preached in 1828 to the gathering at the ordination of the Rev. F.A. Farley in Providence RI, belongs to man’s higher or spiritual nature and has as its foundation the original and essential capacities of the mind.

He maintains that it is only in proportion of this likeness that we can enjoy either God or the universe. “God becomes a real being to us, in proportion as his own nature is unfolded within us.” He goes further to say that the “unbounded spiritual energy which we call God, is conceived by us only through consciousness, through the knowledge of ourselves… God is another name for human intelligence raised above all error and imperfection, and extended to all possible truths.”

Undoubtedly, there are those who might think that this discourse is highly egotistical. Who is this early Unitarian preacher who dared to put human thought, emotion and accomplishment on the same level of God and the complexity of the universe.

Who, indeed? Still, for me there is a measure of truth in the idea that the connection between the Divine in the world and the human being has everything to do with the human being. It has to do with the practices and the devotion that we have to living our lives.

If we functioned in oblivion, which many of us do most of the time, there would be no inspiration and perhaps no revelation. With no time for reflection, how would we acquire insight?

Channing concludes: “There is a spreading conviction that man was made for a higher purpose than to be a beast of burden, or a creation of sense. The divinity is stirring within the human breast, and demanding a culture and a liberty worthy of the child of God."

My garden plants are perfectly spaced for their own growth. They reflect a certain integrity that has nothing and everything to do with me. In my garden, I co-create fertile ground for the abundance and sustenance of my family and my love. It reminds me of the growing nature in all of us and our connection to a living spirit on earth. It gives me the opportunity to remember that it is through my action, my thought and my mind, that I am connected in to a power and an opportunity to sustain joy.

Do you think it would go better if I just followed the directions on the seed packet?