I
was harvesting basil from the garden when I realized just how wondrous life is.
Another example of how when I put aside what I assume to know and my habitual
ways of defining experience, entire worlds are enlivened, quickened as when
sperm and egg are joined. The garden is a likely and befitting place for this
to happen. For many years I looked upward for truths. Later on I looked inward.
And now I find treasure on the ground.
The
basil I was harvesting is a variety called Genovese Basil. The smell is deep
and fresh and welcoming. The leaves are large and very green. It brings to mind
springtime and laughter. In the same garden there is kale, garlic, onions,
marigold, cabbage, and others. They are all different from each other and they
are all beautiful and vital in their own distinct ways. Yet, all grow from the
same dirt. They are watered from the same hose. And they all reach up toward
the same sun. I think about this and all the explanations of how this can be
seem to be after-the-fact descriptions, feeble and watered-down attempts to
dampen and mute the wondrous and miraculous happening right here under our very
own feet. Life can be scary when it escapes out of the box. Behold one more
example of creating God in our own image for the lack of courage to be. Ask any
basil plant you happen to know.
To
use an analogy to help me share my experience with you, it is as when light
passes through a prism and that which has no color manifests color. We could
say that the garden is a prism for the will to live, and the seeds are
storytellers. Isn’t this what they do, quickened, they tell stories, just as
our own lives do? And each story, born of life and light beyond our means to
see becomes something of its own, distinct and vital, molded in space and time?
The
smell of fresh basil is awesome. An entire universe beckons. And beyond that
there are others.
