A Longing for Nature
creating a peaceable kingdom in the garden
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In the aliveness of the season, my experience of earth, soul, and life is turned outward. The fragrance of damp earth, the electrifying charge of green, the scent of early spring blooming flowers, and the hum of bees draw my attention outside myself. Delicate wisps of air swirl as butterflies and birds, particularly hummingbirds, flap wings that carry them aloft over greening fields in search of floriferous landing pads and the much sought-after prize of sweet nectar and nourishing pollen.
Everything my soul will learn during the Season of the Sun will come from outside me, from Nature, and what she is willing to teach me about life, struggle, death, and resurrection. It will not be until the first frost sends the earth back to sleep that I will again turn inward and learn from my Soul about the inner worlds that mind, heart, and thought can traverse, so occupied will I be with the world of sensation.
This is the time of expansion, exhale, activity, and involvement. I am already heavily invested in what has been happening in the woods and gardens and have had to confront the reality that there are powers at play, cycles, variables, and beings with their own agendas. Sometimes we work together (if I am able to grasp the contours of the plan and submit to a Wisdom that is far beyond my full understanding), and sometimes I am bewildered, unable to see how any good will come of tragedy or death. Case in point, some critter raided the robin’s nest. All four perfect blue eggs are gone. Something was nourished so their life could continue, but the robin has lost her young. A new nest with eggs appeared on the other side of the cedar tree, not a Robin’s nest, it’s too small and neatly woven. I am watching to catch a glimpse of whose nest it is. Some of last fall's turtles hatched and made it above ground to continue their life in the pond, and some didn’t. Female painted turtles are now out and about laying a new crop of eggs. Many of those eggs will feed skunks, raccoons, foxes, and others, but some nests will be well hidden, and those will likely hatch and become the foundation of a new generation of painted turtles in the pond. Wrens and tree swallows have occupied various nesting boxes, but no bluebirds yet this year. Voles, chipmunks, mice, and baby bunnies are all in the meadows and woodland edges. The neighborhood hawks have raised a family and are now teaching the adolescent hawks to fly and hunt. The voles, mice, chipmunks, and rabbits will be their food. The herons and egrets have returned to the pond, and the little turtles could be their dinner. There is something tragic yet beautiful about the food web.
Seasonal living and mythic living go hand in hand for me. Each season of the year holds epic stories, mythic tales, and archetypal patterns that teach us many things. I’ve learned that the epic struggle and the tragic but beautiful cycle of life, death, rebirth, including the food web version, a seemingly efficient interconnected system, and a reality in this material existence on the physical plane, is not the original pattern or plan. It works for now, but the reality is the true-myth of the Peacable Kingdom is the once and future essence of earth. I have known this in my soul since the beginning of my time on this earth.
This archetypal idea encompasses the vision of all the earth's inhabitants, animals and humans, living peacefully and in harmony with one another. In the elementary school I attended, there was a print of one of Edward Hick’s Peaceable Kingdom paintings. Edward Hicks' "The Peaceable Kingdom" is a series of paintings inspired by a biblical passage from Isaiah, depicting a harmonious scene where animals and children coexist peacefully. Hicks created over sixty versions of this theme, reflecting his Quaker beliefs and the hope for a peaceful world. That picture tremendously influenced me as a young child and set the stage for my relationship to nature.
The wolf shall live with the lamb;
the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
the calf and the lion will feed together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze;
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
One version of Hick’s Peaceable Kingdom reminds me of the Strength card in the Tarot. That visual connection speaks volumes about how we should approach the mighty and fearsome aspects of Nature and humanity. Strength tempered by wisdom and gentleness finds a way when brute force cannot. This is even true when battling evil. The adage, Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good comes to mind. If we are sure that we understand what the true Good is, then we will also readily recognize true evil and be able to resist and overcome with integrity of heart and mind.
I love this idea of The Peaceable Kingdom with a deep current of emotion which can only be described as a longing. Longing can often be painful especially when one has no hope of attaining what is desired, or when attainment is uncertain, still distant.
A myth invented by Plato though likely based on much older motifs, seeks to explain the longing all humans experience. In this myth humans originally had spherical bodies, four hands, four feet and two heads. In their pride and arrogance, they tried to transgress the boundaries between the realms and dwell amongst the gods. Zeus was swift to punished them by cutting each of them in half, leaving people with two arms, two legs, and just a single head. We are the half-people of today. Humans now suffer from their incompleteness; each one longing and looking for their lost other half.
The Peaceable Kingdom feels like a longing for the lost relationship humanity once had with Nature. We desperately need it and are incomplete without it. I cannot count the times I deeply wanted to touch or hold a wild animal, openly converse with a tree, or sing with a swiftly running stream. Conversing with trees and singing with streams, while odd to many, is completely doable even if the spoken and audible aspects are one sided, the inner communion goes both ways.
The petting, and holding wild animal thing is entirely different. Many people each year in our national parks are injured or killed by bison, moose and other extra large fauna because they get too close.
Several years ago in my area a woman was hiking in a local state park and was approached by a yearling black bear. Instead of making noise, waving her arms and scaring him off she pet him, interacted with him, filmed it all on her phone and immediately posted it to social media. Someone in the comments exploded basically saying “What the h*ll were you thinking! You’re not f-ing Snow White singing with your woodland animal friends. That bear is now becoming habituated to humans and in the future will likely have to be euthanized because its interactions will be dangerous to people.” Sad, but true. I’m not a fan of the brutal calling out this woman got on social media. But, I understand both sides of this event. We have a deep longing to connect in a peaceful, loving, harmonious way with wildlife/Nature. But, in the current world we live in that’s not possible, and transgressing those boundaries only leads to tradegy for humans and animals.
My longing for The Peaceable Kingdom used to cause me great sadness because I believed that we could never achieve such a state of peaceful coexistence. But recently, as I’ve been diving deeper into the mystical side of Christianity and allowing room to believe that both the super and supra natural are quite real I am coming to understand that the Edenic state of earthly harmony and “walking with God in the cool of the garden” as well as the restoration of the creation to its original Edenic state in the “new heaven and the new earth” are far more than just a myth, metaphor or utopian ideal. I believe that the reality where humans, nature, spiritual beings and Divinity all reside peaceably in the same reality with no veil or boundary between them was the original plan and is even now in the process of being restored, and will eventually be fully restored.
In the mean time I work in my gardens creating something that’s as near to The Peaceable Kingdom as I can get. I let my longing be there and explore its exquisite pain and pleasure; the pain of it not being here yet and the pleasure of indulging in the vision of what I suspect it will be like and the happy making-do of gardening and spending time in the woods and fields around me.
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This is a heartfelt and beautiful writing Jen. I simply fell into it and loved every word.
Reading about the woman who touched the baby bear made me think of where I live, which is near a reef. Thankfully, most of the locals have a deep respect for the natural world. There are some things that are safe/ok to touch and some things that aren’t. Visitors don’t always know and their excitement overwhelms common sense. It’s a tough balance sometimes.