Politics of Garden
I am tired of the endless negative ads on both sides on the recall election for Governor. The presiding theory of these ads is that if you say something negative about the other candidate, although it is a partial truth, over and over again it makes it true. When people, like in Chicago today, protest NATO conference, try to speak truth to power they are ignored and/or arrested.
When I and others try to be a voice for the poor in the Catholic Church, being it speaking out for persons with mental illnesses or for people in need, who quickly are becoming the ‘silent majority’, we are ignored or call names and marginalized. When we the people in the Church try to bring up issues of war and peace or social justice that is not a sex or gender issue we find a deaf ear by leaders in the Church.
Politics in the Church or Government is so negative, behind the scenes and full of personal attacks that I get sick from participating. In the garden there are no politics. Only nature, water, sun, soil, weather preside. When nature is balanced all grows. There is some indirect politics involving the garden, like the city dump no longer making compost but paying money to a private company to take the materials away, compost it and sell it. There is some rules about where, what and when you can plant, but not much. With the ability to grow our own soil, thus making gardens possible even on concert, all we really need to do to have a garden is a little of sweat equality.
I am not saying we should not care about government, rulers and democracy. I am saying we can do government using our own rules and conscience. I am not saying to leave the Catholic Church, although many have done so facing the same stuff, but am saying to “do the right thing” following Jesus and our conscience.
However, the strength to deal with politics in government and Church comes from Mother Earth, God the creator and our inner being. A frequent remark by passersby when we are protesting the local Catholic University teaching of the politics of war and killing is that the “military gives you the right to protest.” One of my fellow protestors said the other day the military does not give me the right to speak the truth as my conscience understands it but God gives me the right.
In the Declaration of Independence we declare: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,[75] that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” I find these kinds of truths in the politics of the Garden, not in politics of government or Church.
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