Gardens & Galaxies
The connections are endless...
A Community of Voices
I tell you the truth: unless a grain of wheat is planted in the ground and dies, it remains a solitary seed. But when it is planted, it produces in death a great harvest. - John 12:24, The Bible, The Voice Translation
but for claiming
what God can do
within the dust,
within the dirt,
within the stuff
of which the world
is made
and the stars that blaze
in our bones
and the galaxies that spiral
inside the smudge
we bear.
— excerpt from A Blessing for Ash Wednesday, Jan Richardson from Circle of GraceGravity worked on those first-generation stars, pulling them into galaxies...Those galaxies merged to form larger galaxies. And stars can't live forever. The first-generation stars died, producing the seeds of new generations, as well as the fascinating afterlife states, neutron stars and white dwarfs. - Dr. Chanda Precod-Weinstein, The Disordered Cosmos
A Table in the Garden
What is a garden to a galaxy? They are nothing alike, right? Except that each is a system made up of smaller parts working together. Nebulae, stars, planets, and solar systems are to galaxies as dirt, seeds, plants and pollinators are to gardens. And while they are both bustling with life, another thing that is inevitably present in both is death.
The death of nebulae and stars, planets and solar systems feels very out there. We haven't experienced the catastrophic results of this simply because we haven't been close enough when they happen.
But we've been plenty close when the death of large bushes and trees, family members and loved ones, or promises and hopes comes to sit with us. Those can often feel too close. Some go to the garden and put hands in the dirt to ground themselves, to surround a bleeding heart with life. But it all feels utterly catastrophic.
If a gardener is one who tends to life, they also have to be one who tends to death. And you don't just tend to it. Death is something you have to sit with as well.
Death takes a seat, pulls one up for you, and you commune at the table of grief. And sometimes that table is set in, however oddly, a garden.
In the Biblical account, the garden of Eden is where everything begins. Creator creates, then shows the first human how to relate to this lush, new garden. It is a place of relationship that centers flourishing, mutuality, and abundant life for the human and their myriad non-human siblings. But when grief enters the story, Eden couldn't hold it.
We had to commune in a different garden.
The garden at Gethsemane is a hard place to be alive. In the still and quiet blanket of night, Jesus agonizes about the next crucial moments of his life. Bringing his need to the garden, Jesus seeks for the rocks, the dirt, the trees, and the plants to commune with him, to help offer desperate prayers. It's in this garden that comfort arrives in the form of a celestial being. In the midst of his non-human siblings, Jesus finds this place of relationship and reciprocity where he can agonize, weep, be honest about his anxiety, and experience deep connection.
An honest example of how to commune in the garden.
The third garden isn't named, and it's one with a tomb. This garden, teeming with life and tended to by a gardener, grows around the place that holds death. It holds a space for grief, for dead hope, and for mourning. It's a space for ritual, where even the ritual of death is welcomed.
In Jesus's story, Saturday wasn't the day for death or for life. Saturday was the day to sit, to stay, to sabbath at the table of grief.
Saturdays in the garden are rough.
Saturdays in the garden are when we go out ready to tend to life, but find that there is death that needs our attention.
Saturdays in the garden are when we feel mocked by the blooming flowers and buzzing pollinators, because our life is marked with lifelessness, death, and a gaze blurry with tears.
Saturday is agony, desperation, hopelessness, and fear.
Saturday is brokenheartedness - the kind that shatters you into a million pieces.
I know why we - why I - don't want to commune at the table of grief, don't want to sabbath with dead hope. It's painful and devastating. No one wants the stillness of a Saturday to consider the promise of death.
And so we sit. We sit with the tombs that are buried in the garden of our own stories, the ones we water and tend. On a Saturday we sit at the table of grief with a tomb holding lifeless hopes and promises.
Knowing the tombs in our gardens remind us of the both/and of living. Some days I can't see the tomb for the flowers. Some days, I can't see the flowers for the tomb.
Even when we don't want to, we wake to a new day and take a seat at the table.
Ritual of Connection
Can you guess what I’m gonna suggest you do?
Go outside.
Go outside at night and look up.
Go outside and walk through a garden, the woods, or a flowery greenspace.
Take your grief.
Pick a dandelion.
The Universe’s Dandelion
Depending on what comes to your mind when I say dandelion, I bet I can tell whether you have to pay HOA fees or not. If you have to keep your lawn a certain way or incur a fine, when I say dandelion you snarl and probably think of the yellow pom-poms that dot your driveway and yard regardless of what you do. But that "weed" you are so set to get rid of has been used by many cultures for food, medicine, textiles, and...hope.
If you do not have anyone measuring your grass length with a ruler, or if you remained tethered to a good measure of your childhood wonder, when I say dandelion you probably visualized the whitened puff atop a green stalk. You may have even smiled at a remembrance of closing your eyes, pausing, inhaling deep, and sending the feathery seeds on the currents of your breath carrying the hopes of your whimsy into the earth.
And instead of dandelion, you may have called the fluffy joy-ball wish. This is what my kids and I say when we see one ready to be plucked and blown like a birthday candle. "Look! A Wish!"
Dandelions > HOAs because they carry our wishes.
Just like the wish is an ingenious way dandelions cut evolutionary corners, supernovas send out the seeds of the cosmic garden (because I don't think the universe keeps lawns OR has HOAs). Just like there are 1 million dandelions in our yards, there are 100 million stars just in the Milky Way galaxy. Now to have a supernova you have to have a massive star, which is not every star. Scientist expect a star to go supernova once every 100 years1.
Wait..."go" supernova? When iron tries to fuse at the core of a massive star, it blows off its outer layers in an explosion called a supernova. This explosion hurdles the seeds for future stars, planets, solar systems, and galaxies through the cosmic landscape.
Dandelions don't explode, so they've been in a generations-long entanglement with humanity.
Eons ago, a particular massive star tried to fuse iron at its core. The Celestial Gardener, with whimsy and joy, saw this cosmic dandelion was ready. Eyes closed, with a pause, I wonder what the Gardener wished for. What hope would the star seeds carry lightyears away in space and time? A deep inhale, then The Celestial Gardener breathed out, flinging the star seeds through space carrying the hope and joy of The Gardener to The Earth.
From those seeds of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and more, all kinds of life sprung forth. The very wishes we seed on the earth are direct descendants of the cosmic wishes supernovas seeded throughout the galaxy.
Now we know They can't tell...but I wonder...did The Gardener's wish come true?
A Poem
Whether garden Or galaxy It starts with a seed A "falling to the ground" Cosmically, locally A way of expanding Do you see? Of course not... You cannot see the seed of a galaxy Or the seed of a garden Buried The darkness lays rightful claim On the dying and the start of something new We wish We hope We make a wish with hope But hope isn't all that is needed to grow. Other elements like Oxygen Nitrogen Starshine The dust to dust Am I talking about galaxies Or gardens? Doesn't matter. They both need the same parts to be whole What evolves when we let one thing die To make a new way In the nourishing dark Maybe. From dying And death To dead There isn't a promise, yet Only hope that our hope is enough To mix the ingredients Cosmically, locally To make Gardens and galaxies
What Has My Attention
When I first saw this picture, I thought the subject’s left side body was star constellations, the first illustration I’ve seen that literally embodies Of Earth & Of Stars! Alas, I think it’s actually a reference to technology - and still beautiful! Bida sells prints of much of his work at his website.
The final season of Picard has me salivating for Thursdays!
The wonderful Robert Monson who has his own beautiful Substack created a super chill playlist on Spotify that I’ve really been digging.
Tricia Hersey’s Rest Is Resistance is snatching my edges something SERIOUS y’all…and I’m only one chapter in. It’s good. Real good.
The part about the galaxy’s wishes!
The poetry all over this writing.
So beautiful to read in the morning while it’s still dark out and there’s stillness in my home.
“What is a garden to a galaxy?” 🤩