Beloved Son of My Friend
The first community garden I worked on in Milwaukee was started by Sister Clara, a pastor of local non-denominational church at the corner of a block that is called Gingerbread Land. This was a block that Sister Clara had carved out of the central city as a safe place with safe housing for children. Sister Clara called everyone ‘precious’. I guess it was her way of saying how special and good each person is. Another word used in literature and the Bible to indicate the value of a person is ‘beloved.’ A ‘beloved’ is someone that is loved for who they are, an unconditional love like that of a mother for her child or God for us. Last summer I was in another kind of garden, a flower garden, that a friend from church had created in her backyard to honor her son who was a victim in a senseless homicide. I took some pictures of the garden of the beloved but never got around to putting them on the Mothers Against Gun Violence web page. Since that time the family of this woman and her son have suffered all kinds of setbacks, a sister or daughter whose mental illness left her unable to care for her two children, one now an teen unwed mother; another son or brother who got in with a bad group and now is imprisoned for a longer time than is just, because he could not afford a good lawyer. During this years she has found solitude and peace in her beautiful backyard dedicated to her slain son.
Gardens are like that, a place to retreat and in work and silence find refreshment of mind and soul. When describing a “beloved”, garden imagery is often used. In the Bible in the Song of Songs, a love poem it says: “
‘’My bride, my very own,
you are a garden, a fountain closed off to all others.
Your arms are vines,
covered with delicious fruits and all sorts of spices—
Henna, nard, saffron, calamus, cinnamon,
frankincense, myrrh, and aloes—all the finest spices.’‘
(Song of Songs 4: 12–14)
We commonly pray for compassion. But true compassion both hurts and refreshes because we taste a bit of the sorrow or joy the other person is feeling. In times of hurt, when those precious or beloved suffer, we need a garden of our own to retreat to and be silent.
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