by Vigen Guroian
When Adam gardened, he imitated his Maker in a purely recreative act of cultivation and care. He did not need to subdue the earth in order for it to yield fruit. Rather, the plants were Adam's palette, and the earth was his canvas. There was nothing but delight in the Garden, for Eden itself means "garden of delight."
by Vigen Guroian
"I once said that gardening began when God expelled Adam and Eve from Paradise. I was wrong. What I should have said is that after the first couple greedily consumed beauty, gardening got inextricably mixed up with labor and survival, and farming came into existence."
Sherry Turkle's fascinating story from Alone Together of her daughter's idea of authenticity and idea of being "alive enough" at a Darwin exhibit.
"That's a tough spirituality. That's not any kind of sweet-by-and-by spirituality. That's a spirituality that takes on the world as it is and says, "I'm gonna figure this out one way or another." The mystic and the Moses."
Harding suggests in this essay that the dream is never finished but endlessly unfolding. He suggests that America's most important possibility for the world is not to dominate, threaten, or compete with, but to help each other in a search for common ground. He suggests that when we simply attempt to replicate our free-market materialism, we miss our most vital connections. From this, he opens the possibility that a new conversation may begin — one that might initiate a deeper journey concerning the possibilities of human community across all geographical lines.
