We are gardeners.
We take all of the rotten things of this world, and we join in communion with the worms and the wriggly creatures of this planet to creates the blackest, richest earth we’ve ever known.
When the earth smells deep and heady, we plant a magical seed. This is a seed that has been germinating for many generations. It has been cared for and guarded by our ancestors, and it is time now for the seed to grow.
Over the years, we each take turns tending to the delicate green sprout and making sure it gets enough sunlight. We bring other rotting things to it so that it can keep absorbing nutrients, and we water it with the salty-sweet sweat from our skin.
And slowly… its leaves unfurl… and its trunk grows stronger…
As it grows, we bring other people to come look at the tree, and we begin to understand what radical togetherness looks like. We show them what we can create by valuing what the lie-makers tells us is value-less.
We bring more people to come see the tree, and in turn, those people bring other people, and those other people bring more people, too. And the tree keeps growing and growing. It grows to be bigger than we ever were, as our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren gather round and clasp hands with more and more people.
In fact, by the time that the police and the border patrol and the military realize how many people have gathered to see the tree, it is too late to do anything but to lay down their weapons, so that they may learn a different way.
Soon that tree is so big, and it has so many people clasping hands surrounding it, that the old world is crowded out, and the crumbled concrete remains of it are absorbed by the roots of the tree to make it even stronger.
In the tree now, our great-great-great-grandchildren play. In its shade, our community gardens grow, and we share the water and the land with the earth and with each other.
Before long, we discover that this tree is not the only tree. In fact, all over the world, people have been planting and tending their trees for generations, too, and the branches stretch across oceans and connect us. Our hands clasp other hands, like the trees’ roots twist with other roots.
Now we find that only use we have for the ways of the old world is to learn from our mistakes. Like the compost that helps new plants grow, the old ways help us to understand that with this forest that we grew, we live in true abundance and love.
And we will cherish and sustain this forest for generations to come.
Anna Flurry 