Is there anything more sacred than ripe strawberries from your own little veggie garden, or watching the runner beans breaking through the soil to experience their first taste of sunlight, or smelling the newly planted sweet basil, rocket and parsley, or the expectancy of a little crop of maize, or the forest floor smell coming from your compost heap, or the sheer joy of growing your own tomatoes, chillies, lettuce, spring onions, beetroot, radish and Chinese cabbage?
No wonder the Book of God starts off with God being in a garden. Sowing, planting, growing and creating.
And then God looked at Homo sapiens and said: This is your home. Get your hands dirty! You’ll find joy in what you do.
But somewhere, with the help of shopping malls, plastic bags and pesticides we lost our earthly connection with Creation and its Creator. We’ve evolved into specie that relates better to lifeless, plastic, shiny metal stuff, than with earth, water, wind and fire.
No wonder we give a shit about life on earth.
Until you start to get compost and dirt underneath your fingernails, until you eat an entire meal out of your own little patch of life, until you reconnect with the way the seasons change and life grows and dies before your eyes, until then you’ll be fine with having carrots out of a plastic bag,
Friday, 16 October 2009
Wednesday, 14 October 2009
Let them have cake
In half an hour from now we’ll be throwing a spur of the moment birthday party for Humphrey.
Humphrey takes care of our garden once a week.
I did not know it’s his birthday today.
But Humphrey arrived here with a big cake.
His birthday must be noticed.
His humanity must be validated.
The cake becomes an outcry, a sort of metaphor reminding us that countless people from all walks of life arrive and leave unnoticed; men and women who never get to blow out candles and hear the cheers of friends and strangers celebrating the honour of being human.
At the place where I work we tend to make a big fuss about the people that look, talk and think like us. The rest, those who we so easily forget, are just given a cake, but without the cheers.
But not today.
Today will be different, because while the lawnmower growls in the background, and the chicken is cooking in the oven my wife is out doing some extra shopping, because a cake won’t do justice to Humphrey’s worth and value in and around our home and lives.
Nduvha lavhudi lamabebo anu Humphrey!
Humphrey takes care of our garden once a week.
I did not know it’s his birthday today.
But Humphrey arrived here with a big cake.
His birthday must be noticed.
His humanity must be validated.
The cake becomes an outcry, a sort of metaphor reminding us that countless people from all walks of life arrive and leave unnoticed; men and women who never get to blow out candles and hear the cheers of friends and strangers celebrating the honour of being human.
At the place where I work we tend to make a big fuss about the people that look, talk and think like us. The rest, those who we so easily forget, are just given a cake, but without the cheers.
But not today.
Today will be different, because while the lawnmower growls in the background, and the chicken is cooking in the oven my wife is out doing some extra shopping, because a cake won’t do justice to Humphrey’s worth and value in and around our home and lives.
Nduvha lavhudi lamabebo anu Humphrey!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)