Green Pastures

As one can well imagine there are certain words that don’t first come to mind when one thinks about living in the desert. Words like lush, verdant, green pastures, grass. Ones assessment of the aesthetic of desert living would be almost entirely correct, almost.

When driving through the city one will find small oases of green, perhaps they seem so green because they are set against the backdrop of jaggared mountains or dusty plains of nothingness, I am not sure but these bursts of green are a welcome softening to the landscape. Usually these lawns are accompanied by beautifully landscaped gardens that have been tended to with meticulous care by their keepers. On my drive back from Sifah in the afternoon when I’ve been teaching and driving for eight hours the sudden rush of pink, purple and red spurs me on to complete my journey. I shudder to think how much water it costs to keep these gardens maintained but their psychological worth is immeasurable.  

Before I share my latest observations with you its important to remember one thing about these gardens and grassy verges, they are not huge and I would like to reiterate that they are gardens. The ones I obviously have noticed are the ones next to the highway, they are just short green patches of vegetation stuck between the highway and other roads, they were created, I would imagine, for entirely aesthetic reasons.

We all know how men of any age love a patch of land and a ball of some sort – any ball really, a rugby ball, a soccer ball, a cricket ball, a kak plastic one that starts to droop after its first taste of battle. I have even driven past Indian men playing a game of cricket in the midday sun in an abandoned parking lot. Men will stop at nothing to run around aimlessly for an hour or two with a ball to satisfy their primal instinct to maim and win, they can’t help it, it’s genetic. Most of the soccer fields here are dusty bits of unused land with wooden poles erected opposite each other. I like to think the lack of grassy fields is why rugby isn’t a popular sport in this country. Obviously the first prize in any ball game is for it to be played on a verdant field but in this country that is a luxury many have never experienced. There are, however, the sneaky ones, the ones who make full use of the grassy patches beside the highway. Again it is important to remember here that these are gardens. It delights me to no end when I pass a group of boys playing soccer in said gardens. Not only must one avoid the other players but a great deal of time is spent dodging palm trees, flower beds and the odd hedge. It’s like obstacle course soccer. Now, there is a particular patch of garden that I am especially interested in. It’s a patch of garden on my way to work which flanks the highway and an off ramp. On this little grassy patch of heaven another kind of sporting battle is taking place and I watch it take place every morning and every evening. It’s the battle between the gardeners and the soccer vandals.

Every morning a group of dedicated gardeners are dropped off with their implements of the day to tend lovingly to our little battleground. Theirs should be the victory because this is, after all, a garden. They have a high standard of garden to maintain – the grass has to be a perfect sea of green and the flower beds need to buzz with the colour of electric flora. All morning they toil in the sun until their garden represents who they are – hard working gardeners who are making small stretches of land into veritable bits of heaven despite the sweltering odds stacked against them. And so when their time comes to leave they wipe their brows and proudly leave their artwork for the day.

As the sun begins to set on our beautifully manicured garden another team arrives. Starved of activity all day due to jobs and the searing heat now is a time for them to practice their art, the art of football. Thanks to the freshly irrigated lawns the scene is set for an epic evening game of soccer, the adrenalin equals that of gladiator proportions, for an hour in their day they will take no prisoners. They run, they slide, they dodge and they score; their shoes quickly ploughing up bits of turf and the odd bloom. By the end of the evening the garden has turned into a mangled pitch, one soaked in sweat, muscle power and victory.

Our gardeners are back the next morning; there is a stoop in their shoulders, a tale of loss in their postures. They set to righting the damage that has been done to their artwork, patiently and carefully they patch up the losses, things that took a minute to destroy now take hours to fix. Their dedication is relentless and after hours of hot sweat in the sun their garden has been mended and their pride re-established, until tomorrow morning.

I cannot help but see this little story about a small patch of garden as a metaphor for so much of what happens in humanity. Just looking at the sheer devastation that has destroyed part of Japan in a matter of minutes, and the resulting carnage that is ensuing, one comes to see how long it’s going to take to patch up the grass and make the flowers grow again.

But there is also something deeper than this, it is not just acts of nature that destroy that which is beautiful and has meaning in our lives. There are certain small parts of the world that are beloved to many religions, cultures and ethnic groups. People will die in the attempt to either defend or destroy these places, places whose mere names inspire in people a response so huge that it’s safer not to say them. Why is this so? Does the belief in a greater power have to be intrinsically linked to a remarkably small piece of land? I don’t know the answer, I do know that when a bogus land claim was put on our farm (when we have lived on the farm for well over 150 years) I was ready to fight, maim and kill for the landscape that holds so many precious memories for both myself and my forefathers. An innate sense of land ownership and the memories attached to land is both a frightening and powerful way in which man has evolved.

But our metaphor goes deeper than that still. How many times do we sow gardens in our souls that we hope will have some worth to others only to have someone, in a matter of seconds, spray the entire garden with deadly chemicals. In a few short moments our blooms begin to fade and the grass turns yellow and we wonder if we will have enough energy to get up tomorrow morning to face the destruction and carry on. All it takes is a sentence, a few ill chosen words, a small vial of verbal poison. Very often people don’t even realise the damage they are wrecking, their soccer boots dig into our most green and beloved places, tearing them apart and yet all they focus on is their own personal victory. I know I’ve done this, I probably do it everyday, we all do it on a daily basis because we want to win our game without thinking of the aftermath and that ultimately someone else will have to clean up the mess. So this week I’m going to try and tread lightly on other peoples gardens, I’m going to try and admire the hard work they have put into them rather than try and steal some of their flowers for myself. Even more importantly I am going to try and share that which I have to offer to others in spite of what they might do to me, despite the damage such vulnerability can often illicit. In revealing the tenderest parts of oneself to others we reflect the nature of Jesus to others.

 God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars.  ~Martin Luther