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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
God's garden, made “in the beginning,” does not lie behind us, but ahead of us, in hope, and, in the meantime, all around us as our place of work.
History without gardens would be a wasteland.
What the human being shares with nature, what we demand from nature and entrust to nature, what we long for and reject, this may all become song and poetry, or music and philosophy, or myth and religion; but in the visible world it must sooner or later become a garden, if it desires to make itself visible at all; and the achievement of visibility – as distinct from simple thinkability, and understandability – is its most irresistible drive, as an inherent part, like all the creative drives of the human race, of the one primordial drive to give birth to structure.
It is no accident that scripture locates the first human drama in a garden. The Garden of Eden, literally the “garden of delight,” is humanity's original and perpetually originating home, the place of our collective nourishment, inspiration, instruction, and hope. With eyes, tongues, noses, ears, fingers, and toes, it is the place where people first taste and fully sense the grace of God. Here we learn that we are the beneficiaries of a world of gifts, creatures made by and dependent upon God. Amid plants and animals, and in terms of the varying conditions of soil, water, and weather, people discover what it means to be marked by hunger, blessing, mortality, ignorance, and interdependence.
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