Green Way

“We men of Earth have here the stuff
Of Paradise - we have enough!
We need no other stones to build
The Temple of the Unfulfilled -
No other ivory for the doors -
No other marble for the floors -
No other cedar for the beam
And dome of man’s immortal dream.

Here on the paths of every-day -
Here on the common human way
Is all the stuff the gods would take
To build a Heaven, to mold and make
New Edens. Ours is the stuff sublime
To build Eternity in time!”
- Edwin Markham, Earth is Enough

Green Way Wisdom - Spirituality

“The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to procure;
but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity.”

“The most well-known Epicurean verse, which epitomizes his philosophy, is “lathe biōsas λάθε βιώσας “(Plutarchus De latenter vivendo 1128c; Flavius Philostratus Vita Apollonii 8.28.12), meaning “live secretly”, “get through life without drawing attention to yourself”, i. e. live without pursuing glory or wealth or power, but anonymously, enjoying little things like food, the company of friends, etc.”

Epicurus, 341-271 BCE

Epicurean Philosophy Online

Epicurean History

From a Letter to William Short by Thomas Jefferson, 1819

“I take the liberty of observing that you are not a true disciple of our master Epicurus, in indulging the indolence to which you say you are yielding. One of his canons, you know, was that “that indulgence which prevents a greater pleasure, or produces a greater pain, is to be avoided.” Your love of repose will lead, in its progress, to a suspension of healthy exercise, a relaxation of mind, an indifference to everything around you, and finally to a debility of body, and hebetude of mind, the farthest of all things from the happiness which the well-regulated indulgences of Epicurus ensure; fortitude, you know is one of his four cardinal virtues. That teaches us to meet and surmount difficulties; not to fly from them, like cowards; and to fly, too, in vain, for they will meet and arrest us at every turn of our road. Weigh this matter well; brace yourself up …”

Syllabus of the doctrines of Epicurus (By Thomas Jefferson)

“Physical.—The Universe eternal.

Its parts, great and small interchangeable.

Matter and Void alone.

Motion inherent in matter which is weighty and declining.

Eternal circulation of the elements of bodies.

Gods, an order of beings next superior to man, enjoying in their sphere, their own felicities;
but not meddling with the concerns of the scale of beings below them.

Moral.—Happiness the aim of life.

Virtue the foundation of happiness.

Utility the test of virtue.

Pleasure active and In-do-lent.

In-do-lence, is the absence of pain, the true felicity.

Active, consists in agreeable motion; it is not happiness, but the means to produce it.

Thus the absence of hunger is an article of felicity; eating the means to obtain it.

The summum bonum is to be not pained in body, nor troubled in mind.

i.e. In-do-lence of body, tranquillity of mind.

To procure tranquillity of mind we must avoid desire and fear, the two principal diseases of the mind.

Man is a free agent.

Virtue consists in 1) Prudence. 2) Temperance. 3) Fortitude. 4) Justice.*

Making simple matters complex or complex matters simple are both bad gardening techniques.

Simplifying our relations to things sometimes allows us to live
more complex intellectual and emotional lives.

Repetition and diversification are Nature’s formulas.

Simplifying and simplicity are never simple matters.

The empty garden is already full.

The happiest gardeners have simply learned how to relax.

The simplest garden is never simple.

“It takes four seasons to know one year.

Complexity is closer to the Truth.

Diversity, multiplicity, relations, combinations, mixtures, complexity -
rarely just one process or one thing.

Location, location, location … is also true for plants.

Never just One: fruit, a hoe, the moving Sun. ”
- Mike Garofalo, Pulling Onions

“For the beginning is assuredly
the end — since we know nothing, pure
and simple, beyond
our own complexities.”
- William Carlos Williams, Patterson, 1946, Book I, p.3

Green Way Wisdom - Complexity

“I suppose the simple truth of the matter is that I have always been enthralled by doorways, windows, gates, thresholds, hearths, chimneys, hidden forest trails, gaps in the hedgerow, garden hollows and portals of any kind. It isn’t unusual to find me standing lost in thought in front of a newly discovered gateway or curled up in my Morris chair at home with a mug of tea and a faraway look in my eye, thinking about such places and where they go. I’m entranced by their situation, their architecture, the materials of which they are formed, and even their color, as much as I am by what lies beyond them.

Liminal spaces can be compelling, and they can exert a powerful tug on the sensibilities. Every hero’s journey or heroine’s journey begins with a call to adventure, with one breathtaking, serendipitous, watershed moment in which she or he recognizes a liminal space, responds to its eldritch music and steps across the threshold into another realm. No hero or a heroine here (at least in this lifetime), but the presence of a gateway, any old gateway, calls to me in a voice as lyrical and compelling as that of the mythic sirens, a mere glimpse or a casual mention of one, and off I go.

Mircea Eliade once wrote of doors and thresholds as being both symbols and passages, as places where the passage from the profane to the sacred world becomes possible. The philosopher Martin Heidegger described thresholds as joinings or spaces between two worlds, potent common or middle grounds which hold, join and separate two worlds, all at the same time. In other words, thresholds are sacred places which form a boundary between what is “here” and what is “there”, but they are in themselves neither here or there.

Within the seemingly empty space of a doorway or a threshold, one sometimes senses ancient, wild and chaotic forces in motion, and thresholds have the power to open a cranny or passage between this world and the other side, allowing those tumultuous forces to blow through. Cultures from ancient times to our own knew it, and they took special measures to secure such places, carving arcane protective sigils on their door lintels, inserting sprigs of rowan and Brigid’s crosses into the doors themselves, burying pins and needles beneath their hearth stones, sweeping and blessing their thresholds, and nailing horseshoes above their doorways.”

- Kerrdelune, Beyond the Fields We Know III

“Who am I?”

Such a strange question,
uttered endlessly,
by weekend seekers of the Lost Psyche.
Feigning amnesia,
they blather about their true selves,
their Grand Soul lost somewhere outside their petty lives,
hidden away and blocked by fleeting fleshy passions,
stolen away by the finite soma and mundane mind.

Their Real Self: pure, eternal, blissful, free, true, wonderful;
right around the supernatural corner,
waiting for them like a blind date.

You know who you are!

You are a unique body - interdependent with the watery world;
a boxcar of moving memories - a rich history;
known from the fruits of your work;
meshed with some family, holding somebody dear;
Somebody - unique as the fingerprint of your DNA;
named, spoken for, listening, and …
Your search for “yourself”, your anxious questioning,
makes no sense.

A stale mantra,
a face before you were born koan:
“Who am I?”, sterile, silly,
Pointless.
Yet, following an irrelevant spiritual advisor’s advice,
You try to figure it out, for hours and weeks,
befuddled, awed by your confusion, thinking
It’s your puny powers of meditation or belief or determination
that keep you from discovering
The Holy Grail of the Genuine Self.

You know who you are!

You might want to change who you are,
or forget who you were,
or tell others about who you are,
or learn why you get tricked into asking yourself this foolish question …
but those are quite different issues.

- Mike Garofalo, Above the Fog

“Who are you? Who? Who”
- The Who, Who Are You, 1978

“Post Humus”
By Patti Tana

“Scatter my ashes in my garden
so I can be near my loves.
Say a few honest words, sing a gentle song,
join hands in a circle of flesh.
Please tell some stories about me
making you laugh. I love to make you laugh.
When I’ve had time to settle, and green
gathers into buds, remember I love blossoms
bursting in spring. As the season ripens
remember my persistent passion.
And if you come into my garden
on an August afternoon
pluck a bright red globe,
let juice run down your chin and the seeds
stick to your cheek. When I’m dead
I want folks to smile and say:
“That Patti,
She sure is some Tomato!”
- Patti Tana

Patti Tana reads “Post Humus” and eight other poems on her website: pattitana.com
“Post Humus” is included in Patti’s book MAKE YOUR WAY ACROSS THIS BIRDGE: NEW & SELECTED WRITINGS (Whittier Publications, Inc, Island Park, NY, 2003).

“I see a galaxy,
I watch the earth,
looking at a garden,
I observe an ant at work.”

“As the sun rises from east,
humming birds fly out to flowery feasts,
all things begin to move, feelings of brightness starts to bloom.
Butterflies on flight throughout the day, reminding us of natures primal ways.
Then sun starts to set west, giving way to stillness and rest,
like waking and sleeping, sun will return, dawn to dusk in constant turn.”
- Mr. Sage, Taoistic Poems

“I prefer to their dogma my excursions into the natural gardens
where the voice of the Great Spirit is heard in the twittering of
birds, the rippling of might waters, the sweet breathing of
flowers, and a wee child toddling in a wonder world. If this
is Paganism, then at present, at least, I am a Pagan.
- Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, “Zitkala-Sa”

Green Way Wisdom - Spirituality

In many ways, my garden is my altar. On it I offer up my effort, my caring,
my hours, my creativity. From it the Wee Folk speak to me. Through it I
become more centered, more rooted, more whole, more engaged. Gardening
is one of the primary mind/body movement arts I practice daily.

“Some failures increase our energy and resourcefulness.

“Seeing” is not “believing.”

We often overestimate what we can accomplish in a day,
and underestimate what we can accomplish in a week.

Gardens are demanding pets.

Time is something everyone runs short on and finally runs out of.

An important gardening judgment - When to Do Nothing!

Remember that gophers also need to make a living; preferably in somebody else’s garden.

A garden is made up of stories, not things.”

- Michael P. Garofalo, Pulling Onions

“Karma Tree” by Michael P. Garofalo, Above the Fog

Green Way Wisdom - Zen Poetry

“We found Matisse living in a small house, with a magnificent, sweeping view beyond his
vegetable garden. In one room there was a cage with a lot of fluttering birds. The place was
covered with paintings, most of them obviously new ones. I marveled at his production and I
asked him, “What is your inspiration?” “I grow artichokes,” he said. His eyes smiled at my
surprise and he went on to explain: “Every morning I go into the garden and watch these plants.
I see the play of light and shade on the leaves and I discover new combinations of colors and
fantastic patterns. I study them. They inspire me. Then I go back to the studio and paint.”
- Andre Kostelanetz, This I Believe, 1952

Green Way Wisdom - Seeing