The plants

When I walk through the garden after I’ve watered it in these hot days, the cool ascending fragrance is like heaven.  

The lemon balm, the mint, the roses . . .

And then I become aware of something else coming off the plants, living beings: an emotion. I pause to ask myself what it is. The first thing that comes to my mind is gratitude; thanks.  As I taste the sense of it, I know that’s right but not right. What is it?

Then I find the adjustment to what I’m feeling. I realize I had factored in that the plants are grateful to me ~ that they are saying thank you to me ~ because I brought them the water.

But that’s not it. The plants are wiser than that. They see with a more  . . . er . . . what? . . . rarified, profound, fine, comprehensive? . . . cosmic understanding/insight/vision of unity than I do. What comes to them and what they give, they know belongs to all things, is inbreathed and outbreathed by the divine mystery, the breath of God.

When I water them in these hot, dry days, there arises from them not only perfume celestial, but an emanation of thankfulness. Just thankfulness. Not to me.

It is a lesson in what it means that there is no duality; plants live beyond personality. They understand the One.

And I, because I live in a world of particularity, suchness and individuality ~ personality ~ because I have to have Jesus’s hand to hold as well as abiding in divine mystery ~ I am grateful to the plants.