Our Garden

 Let's talk about "god" or "God" or whatever name you give yours or not. For some, their god is the job or the career, money or a lover or ambition or greatness, sometimes evil. For others, it is the love of their lives and their families and their friends and their neighbours. And some say, there is no god or perhaps that there are many of them. It is their freedom and their choice to do so. The older you become, you see things no more as a child who has been directed in a certain way, but with aging, you've gone a long way on the path of life and you form your own ideas of what it's all about. Age and experience can change what you once thought or  believed in, to the point where you're not sure entirely what it all means. Many question their very existence. That sounds confusing, and unless you are "old" and can deal with questioning your life without bitterness  or blame, it's an okay time of searching. We elders don't mind speaking our minds, and we do have them, and in spite of what some well-meaning  folks think about our "minds" deteriorating with age, we are pretty good at knowing. But we try to be quiet about matters and truths since we have come to believe, based on our many years of life, that we know something younger folks don't,  as yet. Something I began to think, the other day because death has visited others I am close to, far too often, is the "god" matter. It kind of comforts me in a way to think of it in a new light.  I began to see God or the Supreme Being or whatever  your spiritual head is, as a gardener. The Gardener prepares life, the soil, waters it and makes the sunlight shine on the garden. It, The Gardener, whom none of us has met, nor likely ever will, but might want to, does a great job of making sure that where the seeds, us as humans, go, to have the best chance of living and growing. The soil has everything we humans need for living a good life. We, the seeds begin in the soil and everything that happens from then on, is solely our doing. The Gardener looks on and is always there to continue nourishing us and watching. But not doing for us. That is up to us and becomes our good fortune or bad. Seeds don't always grow well and some might be twisted either at the beginning  or later on, but we all start out the same way. We are seeds, and do what seeds are supposed to do no matter what. We grow.  How we grow often depends entirely on ourselves and where we put our energy and strength and desire to be alongside others. The Gardener is happy when we grow well and thrive and produce seeds and add support to all the other plants around us. I am sure The Gardener is saddened when some plants don't put out leaves or flowers or seeds and could while others, sadly try, but cannot. The Gardener hears the rustle of  leaves in the wind, the snapping of seed pods flung out to grow on their own,  the breaking of stems and falling and failing of flowers or petals on dying plants. The Gardener hears and sees but does nothing. It can't. The Gardener sees the loss and pities and continues to nourish the soil and send the rain and the sun and the wind. It's all the Gardener can do. The plants bend and raise their buds to The Gardener hoping for some help, but Gardeners can only sense; they can't help growing and changing and dying and living because only the plants can do that for themselves and The Gardener is not a plant.  The Gardener is just there.