the Requiest

I’ve always wanted a garden. From as far back as I can remember I’ve wanted one. I envisioned what I would have and how beautiful it would be. I dreamed of how I would take care and nurture it. How I would lovingly care for it and everything that it produced. Now I didn’t come to this idea lightly. I knew that there would be problems at times and there would be lots of hard work. I knew there would be days when the sun would feel to hot to work and the bugs would annoy me to distraction, but the picture in my mind would just as quickly brush these thoughts aside. I knew that with a garden I would have a place where I could simply be me not the lie I felt the world demanded me to be. I would find contentment in a garden, in my garden.

Well I have a garden. I’ve had one for almost 20 years now. I worked very hard at getting it, but at the time the work was all pure joy. No matter how much of myself I put into it I felt that I was getting double the return. For a time I did find contentment in it. There was nothing better at the end of a long day than to spend time tending it all of it’s various needs. My wife was/is equally devoted to (now) our garden. It took a little bit of doing on my part to convince her to work with me, but she did. With slight variations in breadth of vision, she caught on to the same dream and diligently worked beside me. At times we would even talk about how we could expand our garden. We knew it was a grandiose idea, yet it had appeal.

However, as time passed I became complacent about tending to the gardens needs. Weeds would sprout up and I would more often than not, try to ignore them. There would be long dry spells and the garden would need watering, but that would have entailed me going out in the heat and so I’d just turn away hoping that a summer rain would nourish it. My wife would come home from an even rougher day and she’d still go out into the garden to tend it, but there was no longer any joy. The garden had just become another job to deal with. Because she’s not the procrastinator that I am, she’d make sure the garden doesn’t die, but at the same time she felt very alone in taking care of it. Because of her diligence and my lack I grew angry with myself, but all too often would turn that anger on her. Now don’t get me wrong, there were times I’d still get into working on the garden with the same glee that I had years ago. On a cool summer morning, even before I’d had breakfast, I could find the joy that I had been missing and even conjure up those more youthful visions of what the garden could become. But those days were few and far between. More often than not, I’d work on the garden so as not to get in trouble with my wife. The garden was not the place of quiet solitude and happiness that it once was.

I used past tense verbs in the previous paragraph on purpose. In the past 2 months I have realized, through more than a little help, that my lack of attention to the garden is causing irreparable harm. I had thought, or at least hoped, that the little bit of attention that I was giving it was enough to sustain it. Of course I was also overly relying on my wife to hold it all together. The reality is that the garden may look good when we clean out the weeds but the soil lacks the nutrients needed to continue using it. So instead of doing the maintenance work all along that was needed, I find myself having to regroup my efforts and begin from scratch giving the garden a fresh start. It’s going to mean a lot of time and energy on my part to clean out all the dead plants and re till the soil, but the investment that I’ve already made, and that my wife has made, is too great to let it continue to fall apart. We both still have our vision of an abundant garden flowing with the fruits (or vegetables) of our labor.

Continue Reading »

The day dream overtook me and I found myself standing in line with a great multitude. There was no need to explain to me why I was in this line, or what the line was for, or why the line stretched out into an infinitely vast space. Understand, all of us in the line knew that it would lead us before our Judge – the Great Arbiter of Eternity. Now, I was in no hurry to see this inexorable line move any faster, for the Arbiter had a book before him and like a pensive school boy I both wanted to see what was written inside and yet feared it too. But the line did move and like cattle heading toward the slaughter we relentlessly moved forward. Nothing was said, nothing needed saying, for we all knew that it was now time to answer for our follies.

There before me now I could see the front of the line moving up before him. And, I saw The Judge, larger than life, sitting at a great, white stoned, judges bench. Before him laid the great book and each of us knew that therein was a page devoted solely to us. As the line moved forward I could make out what was being done. A person would stand before the Judge, who would then turn to a page in the book and without saying a word the person before him would suddenly reel in terror. I don’t know what they saw, but I know I didn’t want to see it. I’ve never seen such a look of horror and panic, of repugnance and physical revulsion. Their body literally contorting under the insanity of what they saw, the scream unable to escape their lips. And then just as quickly they would vanish. And the next person would step forward. Over and over I witnessed the same horrifying scene unfold before me, the line ever diminishing, moving me closer to the Judge to be judged.

And now it was my turn. The judges bench loomed before me like a gallows, the Final Authority staring down at me with implacable eyes and a grave countenance upon his face. He turned the pages in the book and with the index finger of his right hand he pointed at what I knew to be the first words on my page. Just as quickly, I knew what it was that all the people before me had seen. A mirror began forming in my mind and I knew that I was about to see myself and all my past deeds through the eyes of my Judge. In that infinitesimal moment, I inwardly curled into a fetal ball. Dreading with every ounce of my being what I was about to see, knowing that it was going to wash over me like raw sewage. But in that same instance, instead of what I was bracing myself for, a brilliant, radiance reflected back towards me. The light was so bright that in my mind I had to avert my gaze, the heat blowing past me like a warm summers day. I tried to make out what I was seeing and realized that there was someone else standing in between myself and the Judge, it was His reflection that the Arbiter saw and not my own. And with that the mirror vanished as quickly as it had appeared and the countenance of the Judge had changed, a look of acceptance now appearing on his face.

And me, instead of producing a soundless cry of endless horror, there birthed now only silent tears of joy.

DISCLAIMER: The following is a story that I wrote after an extremely pensive state as I questioned whether upon entering Heaven I would retain any of my ’self’ or if my ego would be diluted into non existence within God’s majesty. Please also note that I wrote this in 1998 long before I understood the differences between Arminianism and Calvinism.

Submitted for the Unfettered Monk.
Continue Reading »