Lawn mowers, exile from the Garden, and drought in the American West.
TRANSCRIPT
A few weeks ago, I heard a radio news report stating that the western United States is experiencing a drought that has lasted for over 20 years; it went on to say that the severity of this drought is the worst it has been in the last 1,200 years, with the country’s two largest reservoirs currently full to only 34% and 27% of their respective capacities. Certainly, over the last several years, I have been hearing about the increasing severity of wildfires and the diminishing snowpack in the western mountains; but for whatever reason, on the day I heard this report, these numbers flew into my imagination with particular profundity.
Actually, despite these numbers being so intense, there was something that affected me on an even deeper level, to the point that I was momentarily overcome with grief and sat quietly weeping in my car for a few moments in the parking lot of the dog park. The people on the radio included several farmers and government officials responsible for agricultural policies, and they were having a discussion about how to farm in a drought. Among them was a Hopi tribal member from Northern Arizona who practices Hopi dry farming, a way of growing crops that adapts to changes in annual rainfall through ancient techniques to preserve soil moisture rather than using irrigation. He described how the Hopi have used their observations of the natural vegetation in the spring to determine how far apart and how deep they would plant each of their plants.
As he explained this ancient practice - which was so clearly attuned to the natural world, accepting of what it provided, and skillful in its adaptation, with symbiotic techniques that both supported human life and preserved the integrity of the land - I felt, with a surprising sense of immediacy, that something important and dear had been lost hundreds of years ago from the lives of my own ancestors.
When it comes to drought, the conversation, of course, centers on water. And in this case, part of the conversation was about water restrictions being evoked and enforced by governmental agencies. To my understanding, the first thing to go when water use is being restricted is the watering of lawns. Thinking about watering lawns reminds me of lawn care in general, as well as some interesting conversations my wife and I have been having lately with friends, family, and neighbors due to the fact that, in an effort to make a bit of room for wildness in our suburban lives, we’ve stopped cutting the grass in certain parts of our yard.
Thinking back, I’ve always had a somewhat ambivalent relationship with mowing grass. I love to sit on a cleanly mowed lawn probably more than the average adult, and yet there is something about the act of mowing grass that I find very strange. I remember once, when I was in college, I was cutting the grass in my parents’ backyard, and in my haste to get the job done, I mowed over some flower heads that were leaning over the edge of the flower garden and into the grass. Mildly appalled by my own act of carelessness, I thought about how often in modern culture beauty is sacrificed for productivity.
In remembering that the natural world is the Source of all life on our planet (and, by extension, all beauty, as well), it seems (at least in part) somewhat strange to consider how we cut back the natural world, so that it doesn’t encroach on the civilized lives we’ve created for ourselves. And that reminds me, interestingly enough, of the ancient story of the Garden of Eden. It’s a very well-known story; and while familiar religious or theological readings of the story produce one certain interpretation, looking at the story through the lens of mythic imagination may yield other insights.
In the story, of course, a man and a woman (the First man and woman) are living in a garden planted by the One who Created the World. The garden provides the man and woman with every bit of food and nurturance that they could ever possibly want or need, but there was one tree at the center of the garden - the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil - whose fruit the One who Created the World said they must not eat, for if they did, they would certainly die.
This prohibition proves to be somewhat of an ironic prophecy, because of course the man and woman did eat the fruit and, consequently, leave the garden. And as the story goes, to make sure they did not get back in, the One who Created the World placed a cherubim to guard the east entrance of the garden, armed with a sword of fire that whirled in every direction.
They’ve been cut off from the bounties of the garden, not unlike the way we today cut back the wild, natural world; and the man and woman in the story are kept out of the garden by a whirling sword of fire, which, as I think about the way we often maintain our lawns to look as un-wild as possible, I can't help but notice an uncanny resemblance between the cherubim’s weapon and the spinning blade and combustion engine found in most modern lawn mowers.
But why did they have to leave? Often the story is used to explain the religious idea of sin, but the original story doesn’t mention sin at all. At the center of the story (just like the center of the garden) is the acquisition of Knowledge - and specifically, knowledge of duality - as well as the birth of self-awareness, the two characteristics that we believe set humans apart from other animals and the markers of a child growing into adulthood.
So looking at the story mythically, eating the fruit from the tree at the center of the garden is analogous to the evolution of human consciousness, as well as the passing away of childhood innocence. In other words, the garden is childhood, when we are arguably at the time in our lives when we are closest with nature; and leaving the garden is simply inevitable… it’s the story of growing up. And looking at it this way, the One who created the World is simply a good parent who first protects their child from the splitting forces of duality, and then sends them out into the world to learn about life’s difficulties, pains, and challenges, when the time has finally come to do so. In the story, the first man and woman were kept from getting back into the garden by a guard at the east gate. In the cosmologies of many ancient and indigenous people around the world (including the Navajo people), the East is the direction that represents birth and the beginning of things. So with the east gate being guarded, we get the idea that once we’ve grown up, there’s no going back to beginning… no going back to being a child again, to having things return to the way they were, to having someone else provide the solution to every one of our problems.
There’s no going back, and yet the thing that prompted the first man and woman to leave the garden (which some interpretations of the story seems to suggest doesn’t belong in the garden) actually stands at the center of it. In most old stories, whatever is found at the center of the garden is usually something of great value - something that is desired and sought after - and getting it is oftentimes the point of the whole story. What if acquiring the knowledge of good and evil, the knowledge of duality, was the whole point of the story… not to be trapped on one side of duality or the other, but to understand the nature of paradox and discover the ability to hold both sides of duality simultaneously.
In modern psychology, as well as ancient philosophy, being able to tolerate tension between opposing poles of a given issue is a true mark of maturity. So with the ability to hold tension between the opposites being at the center of the garden, we get the sense that we must both leave the garden and, at the same time, be back in the garden; speaking more literally, we understand that we are suppose to both take responsibility for ourselves while also staying connected to the Source of Life… not just one or the other.
Looking at the culture today, it’s easy to see how we’ve become entrenched in life outside the garden. Imagining ourselves to be permanent exiles, it seems at times that we’ve forgotten about the garden altogether, and so forests continue to be cut down and very little of our food comes from genuinely wild sources. And as political and social duality seems to be tearing the culture into pieces, it’s also easy to see how critical the ability to hold tension between the opposites has become.
So how do we get back into the garden? In the story, the east gate is being blocked, so there is an implied idea that perhaps the way back into Eden is from the west. Just like the East in ancient Navajo symbolism representing birth and beginnings, the West represents death and the end of things; and in the Judeo-Christian mythology, not long after the departure from Eden, there is a flood. In many old stories, floods show up as a destructive force that brings about horrific and numerous deaths. And since I began planning this episode, the terrible floods in Kentucky and Pakistan and elsewhere have also been featured on the news along with the tragic loss of life and property they have caused. It made quite an impression on me to think that just when it feels like our world has reached a limit when it comes to polarizing opposites, we have devastating droughts in one part of the world and terribly destructive floods in other parts.
I want to be clear that, when I say that getting into the Garden means going in the direction that symbolizes death, I do NOT mean that the death of people in Kentucky and Pakistan and elsewhere has any literal or casual connection to renewing our relationship to the vitality and abundance of the Earth. Furthermore, I do NOT suggest, as do certain religious and literal interpretations of the Flood story, that the destructive, killing flood is a result of judgment from a monotheistic god against a people who have displeased him. I’m glad that I haven’t heard any such offensive, dehumanizing statements made about the recent floods; but with the idea of “God’s flood” being so common an image in religious teaching, these modern events tend to create spiritual confusion, as if the physical disorientation that results from such loss of life and property isn’t enough.
Mythic imagination keeps in mind that our mythic stories are not meant to be taken literally but are actually psychological phenomena that have been shaped by our experience of the natural and social phenomena that we have observed. The psychological implication of the Flood story that follows the Garden of Eden is NOT that people needed to die to set things right, but rather that there is a certain attitude or certain worldview that must come to an end before a new worldview can begin to take hold in the collective culture. Also, looking at the story in terms of the ancient elements, in contrast to the sword that creates boundaries by cutting things apart, and the fire that breaks things down into its constituent parts, water is the element of connection, the element that brings and holds things together.
So getting back into the garden requires an ending, and it’s clear to see that, right now, the world is experiencing a great ending of sorts, and that the new worldview that has yet to take hold is calling us to bring back together things that have at some point been split apart: nature and technology; the masculine and the feminine; the innocent optimism of youth and the seasoned experience of age. After sitting with human despair caused by the drought and the floods - which, of course, are both part of the natural rhythms of the world, but in which there is also strong evidence suggesting that humans are making it worse - if I am to have any sort of mythic take on these event, it would be to say that there is a worldview that contains a now dried-out and disconnected notion that we are either totally responsible for our fate and the fate of the World, or not responsible for them at all, and that we are in need of this worldview (which again, is NOT to be taken literally as existing in the same actual geographic locations as the floods, but everywhere the world over)... we are in need of this worldview to be washed away so that a new one might begin to take form, one that will reconnect and hold together the forces of human will and ingenuity with the Forces of the natural world that will always exist beyond our power or control.
That is the duality that seems to be most relevant when I consider the Tree at the center of the Garden along the drought, and the flood, and grass in my own little lawn for that matter: it’s the opposition between providing for ourselves - growing our own food, landscaping our lawns, and inventing complex machines to help us do these things - and accepting that we are still highly dependent upon and subject to changes within the natural world. I don’t want to make a claim that any person or group of people has got it all figured out, but when I was listening to that radio program, there seems to have been a place deep inside me that recognized that something was missing - something I didn’t even know was missing - when I heard about how the Hopi people farm… planting their own crops, but in a way that responds to what nature provides without asking for anything more.
The man on the radio called what the Hopi do “faith-based farming”, and it seems to me that learning to live both in and out of the Garden is a matter, not of any one particular religious belief, but of a faith in the natural world that has always been our Source of Life, even if we cannot see the mysteries of its inner workings.
NOTES
Radio story about the drought: https://www.npr.org/2022/08/11/1117019883/water-week-how-to-farm-in-a-drought
Photo by Ricardo Frantz on Unsplash