World Divinity

Sunday I lazed in the bed, trying to adjust to the time change. In an unusual move for me, I turned on the TV and caught The Secret Garden, a movie I’d never seen entirely. It’s based on the novel of the same name by Frances Hodgson Burnett and I remember it being a favorite book in my younger days.

As I watched the young girl learn to tend the earth, bringing forth plants and blossoms, my mind wandered to the divinity of nature. When the young boy, Colin, moved from his wheeled chair to his feet and took his first steps, I thought how wonderful it was that Mother Earth had nurtured this child to health.

I have long loved the meadows and forests of Botetourt County. I can remember many a time seeking shelter in the bosom of the great trees that surrounded the farm I grew up on.

In the 1960s, my grandmother would put me on her lap, her arms wrapped around me, and we would watch the birds. Robins, she always declared, meant spring was on the way. And she was right, for soon spring would be upon us, just as it is now.

As an adult on another farm, the trees around me whisper when the winds blow. I respond to their call with some unaccountable innate longing. The fields and pastures greet my vision every morning and I am pretty sure I look upon them with love.

The divinity of nature is not something much heralded in this age of asphalt, concrete and man-made time changes. We hurry to reset the clocks, to climb in the car, to make our way into the constructed stores and office buildings that shelter our lives. Who has time for trees?

In January during one of those strange warm spells, I longed for dirt and soil and purchased an herbal seed kit. I was strangely content to be sowing seeds at the wrong time of the year and now I have a little oregano, thyme and basil growing in pots in the garage. Every day I check them and water if necessary. Sometimes I just take the plastic top away to smell the earth. It is divine.

It seems we do not see the divine except on Sundays, when we go to a church building for spiritual succor. I am guilty, too, even though I try to celebrate nature every day. Stopping the world is a hard thing to do with society’s deadlines and demands.

The divinity of nature tells me it is my duty to be a good steward to what I have here. My job is to nourish my husband and the people around me. I am just one of the many keepers of a very large garden of life, one so big I cannot comprehend it.

My wish is that we all could stop for a moment every day to think about the divine around us. For me, it is in the clouds in the sky, the blueness of the mountains, the sun pouring heat and light and nourishment. The divine is there in the smile from a friend, the kiss from my spouse, the touch of a child’s hand.

It’s even there in an extra hour when the time changes. All we have to do is acknowledge it.