I had a new rosebush called “Falling in Love” and it died. I ripped it out and ordered another one. It’s a new variety from Weeks, the rose company. It will be a lovely light pink with a strong scent, or as Michael would say “it’s smelly.” Not every new installation survives and you have to start all over.
I’m reading a book called The Soul’s Code, In Search of Character and Calling by James Hillman. The author would like to put an end to the notion that people have to be fixed, and that symptoms always point to illness. Sometimes symptoms do not belong to disease but to destiny.
I always know when “something is up” and there’s something extraordinary about to happen because G-d speaks in mysterious ways, interesting ways. I feel sometimes that I have a straight line to this Source whatever you may call it or assign it. The garden grounds me, but my head is in the sky, so to speak. It’s because I’m connected so solidly to the earth that I have the luxury of having vision from way up high, if I may be so bold.
In memorial of the rosebush that croaked, I take this passage from James Hillman’s book: “To change how we see things takes falling in love. Then the same becomes altogether different. Like love, a shift of sight can be redemptive—-not in the religious sense of saving the soul for heaven, but in a more pragmatic sense. As at a redemption center, you get something back for what you had misperceived as worthless. The noisome symptoms of every day can be revalued and their usefulness reclaimed.”
I’m a big fan of falling in love. I maintain that love is easy, not difficult to do. Maybe nobody can define it, but you know it when you feel it, and it can be promoted and practiced like an art form. There’s no need to complicate that feeling by saying you don’t know what it is.
Michael and Me
