The Earth As Garden

WED., MAY 8, 1985, 6:19 AM
FARM, STUDY

As you look out at the incredible green of your Farm, contrasting with the early morning sun, it is not difficult to envision the earth as garden. You know that the sun is the center of your system, and that its energy, symbolized by its brilliant light and summer warmth, makes this garden possible. And I did create it all. Hear, o son, as I muse upon this garden.

According to the personified myth of creation, humankind began in a garden, a magical garden that provided for all their needs without any struggle or work. Your experience with gardens tells you this is not a natural story, for gardens usually produce in accordance with the work done on them. Yet when you consider the story in circular form you can envision the garden as that to which you return. Return from what? The spiritual journey energized by the knowledge of good and evil.

You are on a path that brings you into life as a human in the earth. You already have had a longer life than many of those who have been here in earlier times. You are aware of the need for work to bring the garden to fruition, for work that is the means to a comfortable life. Yet even with the ideal work that you have experienced, yesterday was a time of tension and frustration with the enormity of your commitments. Work seems truly real, and you felt “cast out of the garden.”

Yet your work is “people work,” with a strong spiritual component. Even when it is frustrating it is fulfilling… as much so as you will allow it to be. So while you can feel sorry for yourself you also know that the work you do is not truly work. You are “cast out of the garden”, but you are also in the midst of it.

You know, as the symbolic story teaches, that there is good and there is evil here in the earth. Last evening you heard of nuclear war and of peace, of dental disease and dental health, and of suicide and continuing life. Evil and good. The contrasts seem clear. And yet you also know… and this knowledge is from “way back” and from “far ahead”… that these distinctions fade under the truth of My creation. My creation is, finally, all garden. Work is finally unnecessary because of grace. When all of the struggles are seen as unnecessary you are not only back in the garden, you are part of the garden… you are the garden.

You know that I tell you this, realizing that, even for you, it seems strange and far-fetched. It does not fit your culture’s view of life, and it doesn’t even fit well with the Christianity of which you are a part.