EACH MARRIED COUPLE IS LIKE A GARDEN

 Eco-CONNECT'20 

EACH MARRIED COUPLE IS LIKE A GARDEN: A BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVE

By J.B. Nyamunga

The Bible begins with the garden planted by God in the Eden (Cf. Gen.2:8), a garden city, the heavenly Jerusalem. River, a tree of life with twelve kinds of fruit, each fruit each month and leaves of the tree are for healing of nations (Rev. 22:2). This throws one to a wide search outside there and the best place to begin from is that of the book of Song of Songs, which we have come to commonly call the book of Solomon, where Rabbi Akiva describes as “Holy of Holies”.

The garden that flows with water and flowering trees. (Gen. 2-3) and in the book of Revelation it has an invitation of a bride to come…The Spirit and the bride say, Come, let the hearers say, “Come”. Let he who thirst come forward and the one who wants it receive the gift of life of the life-giving water (Rev.22:17).

The lover and the beloved are completely in corporeal world (corpus), while in the Song of Songs we read “How beautiful you are, my friend, how beautiful! Your eyes are doves! (Song 1:15-16).

The interesting part of this text can also raise a pertinent question…why does the couple meet in the garden? It’s the Song of Songs that provides a scenario for holding ourselves to that garden, that garden of reflection… Awake, north wind! Come, south, blow upon my garden that its perfumes may spread abroad. Let my lover come to his garden and eat its fruits of choicest yield… I have come to my garden my sister, my bride I gather my myrrh with my spices, I eat my honeycomb with my honey, I drink my wine with my milk. Eat friends, drink! Drink deeply, lovers! (Song 4:16-5:1).

Pope Francis in his encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ on the care of the common home (2015) which we are encouraged to read atheist a page each day. Just in that same line we also get the apostolic exhortation of Amoris Laetitia: The Joys of Love in the Family (2016). This garden is entrusted to man by God, for care (Cf. Gen. 2:8). Jean-Pierre states this by driving us into the Hebrew understanding of garden when he states that The Hebrew gan is a “fence” (the root ganan means “to enclose, to protect). In this garden (Gen. 2:9) man and woman discover themselves, but that brings in a big trial and challenge on man and women. The matrix of “where are you? 

This question often disturbs many, the answer is often responded to why do you ask? Say what you want to say? Kwani nini (Swahili for (what is it, what has happened). We are being called to make a journey through the Bible, and the best way to get our bearing is through Isaiah…As the earth brings forth its shoots, and the garden makes its seeds spring up, so will the LORD GOD make justice spring up, and praise before all the nations. (Isaiah 61:11).

For Israel shall be like watered garden, like spring of water, whose waters never fail. The prophets as we know them did their missioning in the deserted places, there is where you listen attentively, no noise, only the whistle blowing sound that tickles your ears. Hosea the prophet of love brings in olive tree of the fragrance (marashi) like that of Lebanon. This God can still bestow his beauty out of sorry that each of our story, regardless of their repeated wounds.

The Song of Songs projects us to have the teleos, sharp vision to that of a typical scholar of scripture who would sit on something and gets refreshingly lost in that thought. Its one vision that no one can get it except he to whom that vision is revealed to make that journey.

 Jean-Pierre quotes Robert Alter in his essay, the Art of Biblical Poetry, as unique strategy in the metaphorical inventiveness as that which has a confusing tendency of its borders. He still brings in the reflection of another author, Lewis Carroll’s novel “The characters pass” through the looking glass, and finding themselves in the world of metaphor, a completely wide horizontal hope with new leitmotifs.

One gets lost into the sweetness but there is a limit to it, he can’t hit the roof of sweetness, it’s sweet to his taste. (Song 2:3). It’s not enough to say I love you, but behave accordingly and this is a call to each one in his or her capacity. You should be able to eat with great calmness not as a thief ready for a chase after. It’s about a place for everything and everything in its place.

 In love you don’t compare the palm tree to something else, the beauty of the feel is to climb it and know how it feels. As they say, a palm tree grows under difficulty. Don’t be too lose to be climbed, make it difficult and hard nut to crack, of course if you were not raised in the palm tree zone, this may be difficult to comprehend. You are invited to come in and eat the fruit (Song 4:15-16).

 It’s about the chase coming to the celebration after a catch, its beautiful id you are the one who catches her, she becomes part of you internationally, not externally…my lover has come down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to feed I the gardens and to gather lilies (Song 2:3), you seal it to be yours (Song 4:12), fence of fence. Intimacy is not a public show, it’s a world of two, one feeling and each is lost in the other.

A metaphor is so lifting that you can’t exclude yourself from what Song of Song says. Rob Aben and Saskia de Wit put it, “a room with no ceiling. A place you say what you feel not what you think, its exotic in nature. As one gate closes, the other opened to allow the personal mystery and openness of being in relation.

This is a place of wonder and requires all the attention of lovers…let us go early to the vineyards, and see if the vines are in bloom, if the buds have opened, if the pomegranates have blossomed, there I will give you my love… (Song 7:13). This shows that we are able to drive ourselves to the sexual nature of flowers, between the pistil and stamen.

The irresistible gratuitousness of the buds reflects the bond of their love. As you stay together, everything matures according to that plan of God, you feel at home, you are yourself, not hidden mystery (Song 8:6-7).

Jean-Pierre quotes philosopher Harrison as one person who always liked to say…”the growth gardens are places that show down time, the growth rates are slow, the ripening of the fruit, the growth of trees, thus the garden supports with its long duration, promises and oaths by which the lovers live.

Rumi says “love is a tree whose branches reach eternity and whose roots grow in eternity and therefore the trunk is nowhere to be found. 

John 20 is a typical scenario “Now in the place where he was crucified, there was in a garden a new tomb, in which no one had yet been placed. There then they laid Jesus” (John 19:4-42) she is weeping looking for her lover (V13)…tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away (V15), very powerful gesture of deep passion for lover, for love has no fear, jealousy, etc., this is it. (Cf. Song Chapter 3)…

An encounter in the enchased garden, a graveyard is not an open place for everything to enter in, its sacred place, a place of encounter, a modern desert, a garden of forgetfulness. Hence a good grave yard needs many trees planted there, preserve one and handover to next generation, a change of generations, events, where human person rediscovers the self.

A garden, a place of smells, I sit on the bench and get lost in the smells. We create this garden (kitchen, medical, botanical vertical, urban herbal), where we can get lost in nature, in silence and mediation.

Planting a garden also means offering believers a living parable of God’s faithfulness in his plan of salvation. Between the garden of the origins and that of the resurrection while waiting for gardens-city that of the heavenly Jerusalem.

Between the man and the woman, the garden is the holy of holies of meeting the parable of miraculous beginning and faithful growths of secret intimacy and communion with creation and with the creator. This mystery is great… (Eph 5:32). Equally great is mystery between the couple and the garden.