Hello my friend,

I was inspired to talk to you about our inner gardens because last year I watched a Masterclass by Ron Finely on gardening. I don’t have an actual physical garden like he is teaching everyone to plant, but I connected to so much of what he was saying on a metaphoric level.

He tells his story of how he got started with gardening, and how he fought to make gardening a thing in South Central Los Angeles. I grew up in South Central LA during my middle school years. I know what he’s talking about. The streets aren’t taken care of, and the crime rate is high. And so Ron Finely’s mission is to teach people to plant edibles or beautiful things because his mantra is beauty in, beauty out, you put beauty into a space, that’s what you’re going to get out of it. He became known as the “gangster gardener” changing south central LA with soil.

There’s this photo I found while I was doing a bit of research for some writing.

It’s a picture of a couple in London who had built a garden inside a bomb crater during World War II.

The caption of this photo reads: “Where Nazi’s sowed death, a Londoner and his wife have sown life-giving vegetables in a London crater.”

I love that so much, it’s one of the most beautiful things ever.

And on the other side of the world, years later there would be places in Vietnam where villagers would turn bomb craters into gardens, fish farms, sites for houses, and swimming pools.

Humans have such a capacity for destruction and creativity, and we try to make our impact within these polars.

Some send bombs to destroy and clean out, while others create a vegetable garden.

You know, I’ve been guilty of creating a few craters here and there in people’s inner gardens. I’ve been critical, judgmental, without compassion and mercy, but I thought I was changing the world. You know how it is: You want to make a difference, have some sort of impact, perhaps leave a legacy, make your life matter in some way. So you go to war, you join a revolution, a cause or something. But a lot of the time war brings famine. People go around setting fire to each other’s garden’s, and we’re left with nothing but ashes and destruction.

““Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.””— Leo Tolstoy

There are revolutions that change the course of history, and don’t get me wrong, these sometimes have their place. But there are revolutions that you have with yourself in order to change the course of your life and those around you.

We’re talking about your inner garden after all, and after a year like 2020, with a pandemic, riots, fear, conspiracy theories, hatred, anxiety… of course you have places in your garden that probably have suffered severely. Maybe some stuff has burned down, maybe you have some craters that circumstances, people, or life just tossed out of nowhere and blew a big empty hole and you’re trying to figure out what to do next.

If there’s one thing I know for sure, is that hurt people hurt people. Someone who has a thriving inner garden, does not go around burning other people’s gardens to the ground. There’s so much reaction and lashing out that just creates more violence and no beauty is being created. I guess what I’m trying to say is that sometimes a revolution doesn’t start with picking up arms and weapons, but starts with putting them down. It starts with cleaning up the rubble, and planting a garden in the bomb crater. It starts with making ponds, and odd shaped swimming pools, and breaking ground for new homes, out of the dirt that was overturned by violence and explosions.

The revolution of turning ashes into beauty.

Creating beauty in a world that is obsessed with power, and influence, and taking over is a revolution.

It goes against the marching orders we are given… and it goes against the beating drum that everyone hears.

How are you creating beauty in your inner garden when you face destruction, when someone has come through, set fire, and ravaged your carefully tended garden? What one does in the aftermath, what one does with the ashes is the real revolution, the real change.

Maybe taking care of your inner garden is the way you make a difference. Revolutions bring change, they stir things up, but they are not always explosive. They don’t have to be loud, take over the entire world, or be in people’s faces. They don’t have to be bloody, or aggressive.

Sometimes the greatest war we can wage is creating beauty out of the ashes.

One of my favorite poets, Rumi, said this:

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.

Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”

So, go on.

Continue to cultivate your inner garden.

We need people who are creating more beauty instead of burning down other people’s gardens.

There’s this story that Leonard Woolf wrote during the rise of Hitler: ⁣⁣

⁣⁣“One of the most horrible things at that time was to listen on the wireless to the speeches of Hitler — the savage and insane ravings of a vindictive underdog who suddenly saw himself to be all-powerful. We were in Rodmell during the late summer of 1939, and I used to listen to those ranting, raving speeches. ⁣⁣One afternoon I was planting in the orchard under an apple-tree some iris, those lovely violet flowers. … Suddenly I heard Virginia’s voice calling to me from the sitting room window: “Hitler is making a speech.” I shouted back, “I shan’t come. I’m planting iris and they will be flowering long after he is dead.” Last March, twenty-one years after Hitler committed suicide in the bunker, a few of those violet flowers still flowered under the apple-tree in the orchard.”⁣⁣

Plant some iris in your inner garden, something that will outlast all the hatred and ugliness around you. Keep planting good things, keep making good art, keep writing good words, keep making music… because long after these political and power systems rise and fall, beauty will keep on. ⁣⁣That’s the real legacy. That’s planting a Revolution.

So my friend, I hope you stay curious and courageous… and now go, plant some iris.

Love,

Tiara