Gunilla Norris - A Mystic Garden: Working with Soil, Attending to Soul

In old agrarian calendars the first of November, All Saints Day, was the beginning of the new year. Today is gray and cold. The air is charged with the coming frost.

Could we take that leap of faith that now is when gardening begins, with an approaching end? Soon the ground will be frozen solid, the grass covered with early snow. Everything will grow quiet in the colds embrace.

What is wrong with feeling joy in this clout of cold? When something is over, its overno doubt, no turning back, no illusion. Winters big hit is a kind of liberation. Its a chance to stop, to turn our backs on effort. We can let ourselves rest. We can turn within.

This is true for great losses in life. A clean acceptance of them is finally freedom. The slow recovery from grief is a winter season of sleep, of rest and allowing things to be. It is trusting, rather, that what is just now will move us to what can be. Joy and loss are together. Loss cauterizes, and grief, when fully accepted, opens us to new life, to a mysterious, inexplicable joy.

Any love that has been experienced
is not lost.
It returns to Love itself.

How full of invisible life
is the garden youve been given.

At this very moment,
you are in company with everything.
Trust does not need visible signs.

The weather growls, hisses, screams against the window. Trees are coated with ice. The bushes sag with the weight. Car doors freeze shut.

Out there, the garden lies mute under this howling. Silently it shows how to be in the presence of storm.

Accept. Be still. Stay inside. Stay inside.

The trees will be diamonds
when the sun comes out.

Ice and Beauty,
Howling Wind.
These are also the names of God!

The garden is under three feet of snow. In some places I cant even see the trimmed roses poking up out of the drifts. The taller raspberry canes and hydrangeas are like a mans two-day stubble on a white chin.

Now the tarragon has gone underground. Near the house corner where it is warm, the clematis vine is a crumble of brown leaves and stems. It looks like a heap of tea leaves someone spilled in great haste.

Everything is dormant in the cold. My spirit, too, is spilled and scattered. I seem to be at a standstill. Do I know that? Or is it that, connected to God, one somehow moves forward even in sleep, in confusion, in turmoil, in cold? Benumbed, we may wonder if perhaps it is in quietude, in seeming deep freeze, that God enters our depth without interference?

Below the ever-tracking mind, can we sense, trust, or feel the soul being led? Could we learn to simply accept this, to allow it?

Our egos self-importance is always there, and so is our wavering. How impossible it often seems to give ourselves over, to accept the cauterizing cold, the surrender of well-laid plans, the necessity to die daily to live.

Continuing to ask questions
is a way for the mind to make itself important,
to pretend it has control.

Let go.
You are dying daily.

Its too early for anything to be done in the garden. The sun pours downa promise of the warming to come. In a day or two, however, the temperature will drop below freezing again. I can be fairly sure of that. Now is a time of waiting.

I sit down on the makeshift bench against the back of the garage. The vegetable beds lie before me. I lean back.

What do we do when we wait? Plan? Fidget? Fret? Dream? Rest? Pace? Why is it so hard to do nothing? The simplest, easiest thing is to let things be. Why not just be in the sun this little moment? Perhaps when we do nothing we see how naked we feel without plans? Perhaps we feel useless without our goals? To be without agendais that not the most lovingly present and accepting anyone can be?

The earth is ancient and spacious
a millennial presence with no hurry,
no anxiety.

Youve emerged from that patience.
It took countless years for your kind
to evolve, to stand on firm ground.

What is one of your months with such a perspective?

Its balmy out, a winter tease. I take off my jacket, walk in the garden where everything is wet, soaked through. I leave footprints, the rubber treads of someone in a sleepwalking dream who somehow woke up in sunshine.

Can a warming thaw penetrate to the coldest parts of us? Why is it so hard to be undefended, to allow ourselves to be like the ground, opened and moistened?

Why question gifts?

Embrace warmth
when you feel it,
allow earth to support you
when you stand on it.

The grass is intensely green next to patches of lingering snow. This is the time betweenneither winter, nor spring. So much is invisible now, yet deep down there is a burgeoning, an unstoppable force.

The ground is saturated. Life teems below the surface. Right now, in this messy, volatile weatherone day warm, the next day freezinga transition is happening. Can we trust our own confused, inner mud season as much as the one outside the window? Can we trust that what is not now visible in our lives will emerge one day?

Somewhere in the Talmud it is said that every blade of grass has its own angel whispering, Grow. Grow! Are we too sophisticated for angels, too proud to be helped? What would happen if we listened for that loving whisper meant for us?

There is a common saying
If something can go wrong,
it will.

But the opposite is truer.
If something can go right,
it will,
it must!

T he plants have been resting out of sight and deep within winter. Theyve been gathering potential for the next season. Some have died when the weather and their general health conspired to end their lifespan. Perhaps more goes on in the winter of the soul than any of us can imagine. No wonder we feel elated when we see the first shy green shoots of a snowdrop. Now here, here is the beginning, we might think. This is not true, of course. The beginning was long before these signs.