ROGER CRAB (1621-80), who had been for a time one of Cromwell’s soldiers, was celebrated in his lifetime for giving his entire — substantial — estate to the poor; for living on three farthings a week; and for his teetotal, vegetarian life as a hermit near Uxbridge. In his book, The English Hermite, or wonder of this age (1655), he wrote: “When I am in my earthly garden digging with my spade I saw into the Paradise of God from whence my father Adam was cast forth.”
Ecstasy aside, gardens are hard work. The year’s passing from drear February to rumours of spring always catches me unawares. At least this year I have my early spuds in, and the broad beans are thrusting their clenched fists through the soil to grasp the sunlight; but I am “behind”: tomatoes need re-potting, etc, etc. And, with this warmer spell, I’ll soon be kneeling in that form of meditation which some call weeding and in which one’s mind does idle. Like wheat and tares and together sown, it throws up a mixed harvest of thoughts blowing about all over the place, some useful, some not. How do you weed them? Horace (who had a farm near Monte Soratte, in Rome) says it all: “You chuck nature out with a pitchfork, but it soon comes back.” Just like my Lent, really: always less well forward than intended, like my garden.
Gardens do matter — good authority says that God planted one, which the Fall made paradise lost. The dying Lord says to the repentant thief, “Today thou shalt be with me in paradise”; and paradise is the garden restored — the very word in Farsi means “garden”. And the living Lord takes his humanity from Blessed Mary, herself the garden of wondrous fruit which the rapturous Song of Songs anticipates: Hortus conclusus soror mea, sponsa, hortus conclusus, fons signatus (“A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed up.”)
Behind our cathedral, against a mellow, west-facing wall, they have made a new Mary Garden. Flowers associated with her — Our Lady’s Slipper, Our Lady’s Mantle, — form rich patterns in their season. On the wall hangs a reproduction of Andrea della Robbia’s maiolica Virgin and Child in a garland of fruits and flowers. Milo the Labrador and I often pause before it on our morning walk, to pay our respects and wonder at her obedience. (At least, I do. He’s reasonably obedient.)
One’s mind wanders. . . Mary’s joys, Mary’s sorrows. . . The myth of Eden’s garden — the lost Golden Age — when we knew not the doctrine of ill-doing, when World and Man were wholly in harmony, when (in classical myths of Saturn’s reign, for example) plants and animals joyfully offered themselves (sponte sua) to man’s delight. . . Poets and artists keep alive the rumour of this nostalgic desire: Ben Jonson’s “To Penshurst” — an effusive compliment to the Sidney family — celebrates an estate so bounteous that “eels leap into the fisher’s hand,” and “partridges for thy mess are willing to be killed.”
But the way of the world as it was, and is, leads to another garden: to the bloody sweat in the Place of the Oil Press at the foot of the Mount of Olives; to torture; to death; to a Tree stained with the blood of Sacrifice. This Passover Lamb consented (sponte sua) to be slain, giving food without stint to those who will have it: “Take, eat, this is my Body. . . this is my Blood.” The Tree of Sacrifice bears fruit freely, irresistibly, offered.
In another spring garden, early in the morning a woman, greatly sorrowing, sees one who, through her tears, seems to be just a gardener: but this is The Gardener who planted Eden, the pattern of all gardens past and future. Man was set in Eden to be a just steward of the trust given to him, and that means the joy of work.
Voltaire, wiser perhaps in a different way than he thought he was, advises cultivation of our own gardens. “Best to get well forward with that ol’ land,” as they once said round here (less elegantly than Voltaire). Then patient, diligent waiting for grace of shower and warmth of sun to ripen our fruit.
Dr Charles Moseley is a Life Fellow of Hughes Hall, Cambridge. charlesmoseley.com
The Revd Dr Malcolm Guite is away.