This is a long boring self-important navel-gazing ramble about gardening philosophy and my religion, filled with big words that make me feel good about how smart I am. Run away now or suffer the consequences of enduring my bloviations.
My in-laws and I recently had the opportunity to head down to the property to do some collaborative organizational work. During that time, I was reminded of some lessons I learned from a fantastic podcast called The Lord of Spirits.
In the ancient world, there are many metaphors and similes that were common parlance for the ancient speaker. One of the more common ones, and one that transcends innumerable religions and cultures, is the metaphors and similes describing chaos and order.
Jordan Peterson talks often about these near-universal metaphors. It seems that regardless of the culture or religion, there are means by which the ancients described chaos that they share. One of these means, perhaps the most common, is that of a raging sea, or leviathan, or water. In Genesis chapter 1, all that is begins as “water,” and the Spirit of God commands the chaos to submit to orderliness, and it does. (This is notably in contrast to other creation stories which usually involve a violent, bloody struggle between the allegedly creative deity and the monster of chaos.)
Genesis 1:1-10
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.
6 And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.
9 And God said, “Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry ground “land,” and the gathered waters he called “seas.” And God saw that it was good.
After creating the earth and everything in it, God created mankind as his emissary on earth. God tasked mankind with continuing the work of ordering the garden of Eden by naming the animals and ruling them. This is in part what is meant in verse 26,
Genesis 1:26
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
As God ruled over the chaos (water), God created man to set the garden in order and rule over it, differentiating the garden from the chaos of the wilderness. In the ancient Hebrew tradition they used wilderness as another metaphor for chaos. That metaphor has echoes in the organization of the Israelite camp, and elsewhere in the Old Testament.
When we’re out in the wilderness of the property, I feel small in a way that’s difficult to communicate. There are aggressive, robust plants absolutely everywhere that threaten my concept of what an ordered property looks like. I am nearly always overwhelmed with the task that I feel is my duty as caretaker, which is to set the property into an order that will produce a valuable crop, whether that crop is hazelnuts, chestnuts, fruits, or venison.
In spite of this overwhelming sense of smallness, working on the property is a deep joy for me. When I’m out in the property hiking up and down hills and getting blisters, or sweating in the sun, or swatting at biting insects, or stretching a sore back, or waging war against the rocky soil with my shovel, I relish the time spent. I’m participating in the process of setting things in order, which I feel very deeply is my fundamental purpose. If any of this material spoke to you, please, reach out to me. I’d love to talk to you about it.
If you’d like to get email notifications when I post new stuff, click here!
Leave a Reply