Two Invitations!
Anyone who has ever had a toothache knows how attention can become riveted on one single thing. It is a kind of attention that is not chosen, but demanded. The mind simply has to be dragged away to attend to anything else—except maybe to call a dentist.
You make the call in hope the person who answers will attend to your need at the earliest possible moment. You hope they are able to make your need their top-priority for the time it takes to attend to your well-being. You want to be able to give your attention to something besides that pain in your mouth. You don’t want this dis-ease to continue directing your attention and your actions. You want your power to choose what to attend to and what to do. You want your life back.
When you cannot create your own well-being, you hope for someone else to act on your behalf. You hope the person who answers your call will get you in to see the dentist at the first possible moment. You hope their attention is not being commanded more by their own pain or pleasure than by your need in the moment. And, you hope for a skillful dentist, one who can draw on their knowledge and experience in order to give full attention to the work to be done. You want your dentist to solve the problem you can’t solve for yourself.
At 97, my step-father had become a gardener others turned to when they faced a gardening problem they didn’t know how to solve. He had become a skillful gardener, not because he had the internet for getting ready answers, but because he tended gardens. And he tended gardens even after he could afford to buy what he grew because he loved to see plants thrive. Over time, his whole body gradually inclined forward as if he were hoeing or trying to hear more clearly. Even the back of the work jacket he left rounded out at the shoulders like his body.
While gardening requires addressing many problems, there is a difference between dealing with a problem and helping a plant to thrive. Gardens require tending, and tending is a process that unites the mind, heart and body through caring and careful action. A skillful gardener is one who solves many problems in the process of helping plants to thrive. Helping a garden to thrive engages the gardener in looking in order to see and of taking direction from the plants as their well-being falters or emerges. Thriving plants become a thriving garden. A thriving garden helps the gardener thrive, and thriving is as much in the tending process as it is in the outcome.
The high tunnel and outdoor planting spaces at Recovering Joy provide opportunities for participants to tend plants for food, flowers for market, and soon, we will plant wildflowers for bees and butterflies. Our hope is that tending will help participants gain skills and cultivate habits conducive to their own and others’ well-being. Our hope for the arts is similar to our hope for gardening. We believe that both gardens and art emerge through tending, just as gardeners and artists do.
Now, here are the two invitations. First, if you would like to participate in the wildflower planting or support it in any other way, let us hear from you. And second, we want to hear about your own experiences of making art. Let us begin a conversation!