Latest / Muggle Snuggle: A Boring Harry Potter Podcast to make you Sleep / Hermione's The Garden of the Mind: A Quiet Hour in the Herbology Greenhouse

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Hermione's The Garden of the Mind: A Quiet Hour in the Herbology Greenhouse · Muggle Snuggle: A Boring Harry Potter Podcast to make you Sleep

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Come closer, now. Settle in. I have been waiting for you.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: The greenhouse is warm tonight. Not the brittle warmth of
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: a summer afternoon in a glass house, but the deeper
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: warmth that gathers after sunset, when the stones of the
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: floor have spent the whole day soaking in the light
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: and are giving it back slowly, the way a good
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: memory gives back its color long. after the day of
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: the event has passed, I am standing just inside the
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: door with my hand resting against the iron frame. And
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: the warmth is rising through the soles of my shoes,
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: through the bones of my ankles, up into the backs
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: of my calves, and I want you to imagine that warmth.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: I want you to feel it in your own feet,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: because wherever you are right now, whether your toes are
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: tucked under a blanket or bare against a cool wooden floor.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: The ground beneath you is holding something for you. It
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: has been holding it all day. Now it is offering
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: it back. Welcome to the greenhouse. Let me tell you
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: a little more about where we are, so that you
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: can really feel yourself here. This is not the great
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Hogwarts greenhouse where the fourth years replant their boobitubers and
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: the third years wrestle with venomous Tentielia. That greenhouse is
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: bright and noisy and full of the cheerful chaos of learning.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: This greenhouse is older, smaller, tucked away at the eastern
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: edge of the grounds where the castle wall curves inward
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: to make a small, private courtyard. Most students never find it.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: I only found it by accident in my second year.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: When I was following a tabby cat, I was convinced
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: was a transformed animagus and who turned out after three
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: days of patient detective work to be an actual tabby cat.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: But that is a story for another night. Tonight, I
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: want to tell you about this place. The door is wooden.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: banded with black iron, and it does not creak. It
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: swings inward on oiled hinges, and as you step across
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: the threshold, the air changes. Outside, the September evening is cool,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: the kind of cool that makes you pull your collar up. Inside,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: the air is soft and humid and smells of loam
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: and mint and something sweeter underneath that I have never
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: been able to name. A green smell, an alive smell,
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: the smell of growing things the floor is flagstone and
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: a thin green moss has crept in along the edges.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Between the stones and the wall, soft as velvet underfoot,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: The walls are mostly glass, but old glass, the kind
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: that distorts the view slightly so that the stars outside
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: seem to swim a little when you look at them,
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: the way fish swim when you watch them through the
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: rippling surface of a pond. And then there are the plants.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: The plants are everywhere. They are not the loud, pushy
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: plants of the main greenhouse. the ones that grab at
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: your robes and snap at your fingers. These plants are quiet.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: They grow along the walls in long wooden boxes. They
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: climb up strings and trellises. They hang from the ceiling
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: in copper pots, their trailing vines brushing the floor when
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: you walk beneath them. They sit on the broad stone
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: bench in the center of the room in terracotta bowls
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: and they breathe out a slow, Steady breath of warmth
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: and oxygen that fills the whole greenhouse with a feeling
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: I can only describe as held. Held in the way
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: a hand is held. Held in the way a long-held
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: note is held in music. The greenhouse is held. Then
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: close the door behind us. The latch clicks softly. And
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: the world outside, the world of essays and owls and worry,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: is no longer relevant. We have stepped into another country,
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: a small country, a green country, a country that knows
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: nothing about the day you have just lived and does
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: not care and will not ask you to explain it.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: There is a low stone bench against the far wall,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: half hidden beneath the trailing branches of a moonflower that
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: only opens after dark. I have sat on this bench
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: many times. I have sat on this bench in winter,
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: when the glass fogged with frost and the only color
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: in the room was the silver of moonlight on the leaves.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: I have sat on this bench in the first warm
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: evenings of May, when the air smelled of new grass
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: and the night-blooming jasmine was so heavy with scent that
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: you could almost feel it on your tongue. Tonight I
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: sit on this bench at the very end of summer,
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: when the greenhouse has the particular hush of a room
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: that has finished its busiest work and is settling into
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: its quieter, more contemplative season. Demomi, the moonflower is just
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: beginning to open. Its petals are still furl tight as fists,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: but in another hour, perhaps less, they will unfold into
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: wide white cups that look in the dark, almost, like small,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: soft moons. The air around it smells faintly of honey
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: and lemon zest. Somewhere, I do not know exactly where,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: a cricket is singing, a single, repetitive, almost meditative note,
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: like a tiny monk chanting the same syllable over and
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: over because he has decided that syllable contains everything worth saying.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: The sound is so steady that it disappears into the
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: room and becomes the room the way a ticking clock
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: becomes the silence in which it ticks. I think about
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: how many evenings like this one I have spent in
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: this greenhouse. Dozens, perhaps a hundred. I do not come
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: here to study. I do not come here to do
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: anything really. I come here to be in a place
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: where the work of being alive is happening at a
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: pace my mind can finally match. In the castle, things
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: move too fast. The staircases change, the portraits argue, the
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: owls arrive with their little scrolls of obligation. In this greenhouse,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: things move at the pace of leaves. Leaves do not hurry.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: Leaves open when they are ready. They fall when they
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: are ready. They do not consult a schedule. They do
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: not apologize for taking too long. They simply do what
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: they do, in their own time, in their own way,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: and the rest of the garden arranges itself around them.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: This is what tonight is about. The Garden of the
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: Mind is not a place. That is the first thing
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: I want you to understand, and it is also the
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: most important. The garden of the mind is a way
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: of being with what is already inside you. It is
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: the practice of walking through your own interior the way
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: a gardener walks through a garden slowly, attentively noticing what
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: is growing, what is wilting, what needs water, what needs pruning,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: what is, against all odds and against all expectation, flowering.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: We all have a mind. That is not the same
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: thing as saying we all have a garden. Mine is
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: the whole tangled, brambled, half-wild acre. Every thought you have
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: ever thought, every memory you have ever stored, every worry
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: you have ever carried, every joy you have ever felt,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: the garden is the part of that acre you tend.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: The garden is the place in your mind that you
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: visit on purpose. The way you would visit a friend.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: The way you would visit a quiet room with a
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: low lamp and a single chair and a window that
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: looks out onto something green. Most of us, most of
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: the time, are not visiting the garden. We are lost
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: in the brambles. We are chasing our thoughts the way
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: you might chase a rabbit through a hedge. Breathlessly, hopelessly,
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: never quite catching it and exhausting ourselves in the process.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: We forget that the garden is there. We forget that
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: there is a gate and that the gate is open
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: and that all we have to do is walk through it. Tonight,
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: I am going to walk you through that gate. I
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: move away from the door and cross the flagstones to
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: the long wooden bench in the center of the greenhouse.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: there is a candle on the bench set inside a
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: small glass jar, and I light it. The flame is
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: a small, warm thing, hardly larger than a thumbnail, but
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: it gives the room a new quality, the quality of intention. Before,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: the greenhouse was simply there, lit by starlight and the
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: slow silver of a moon I cannot quite see. Now
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: it has a center. Now, there is a small, deliberate
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: point of warmth, and around it the room arranges itself
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: the way a garden arranges itself around a single rose,
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: everything else a-stepping back a little, making room, giving the
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: focal point its due. I sit down on the bench.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: The wood is smooth and cool. My hands rest in
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: my lap. My feet are flat on the mossy, flagstone.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: And I do the simplest, most difficult thing a person
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: can do. I close my eyes and I breathe. I
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: want you to do this with me. Not later. Now.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Take a breath. Let it fill you slowly from the
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: bottom up. Imagine the air arriving first in your belly,
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: then rising through your chest, then settling behind your collarbones.
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: Hold it there for a moment, not straining, just resting.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: And then, release it through your nose, gently, the way
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: you would let a leaf fall from your hand. This
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: is the first gate of the garden. It is the
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: breath gate, and every time you cross it, you leave
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: the brambles a little further behind. Now, when you are ready...
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: I want to take you on a walk through the
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: garden itself. I am going to describe it for you
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: as we go, but I also want you to feel
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: free as you listen, to add your own details. Your
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: garden is not my garden. Your garden is yours. So,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: if the roses in my garden do not match the
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: roses in yours, that is perfect. If you have no
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: roses at all and only an orchard of apple trees,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: That is also perfect. The garden of the mind takes
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: the shape of the person tending it. That is its secret.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: That is also its deepest comfort. The first bed we
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: come to is the bed of small, persistent joys. This
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: is the most important bed in the whole garden. It
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: is also the easiest to overlook. The small persistent joys
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: are not the loud ones. They are not the birthdays
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: or the promotions or the holidays that come around once
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: a year and demand to be celebrated. The small, persistent
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: joys are the things that happen every day and that
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: we have begun, through long familiarity, to forget that they
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: are joys at all. The warmth of a cup of
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: tea held between two palms, the weight of a cat
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: asleep on your lap, The first five minutes after you
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: lie down in bed, before your mind has begun its
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: evening committee meeting, the exact sound a kettle makes just
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: before it boils. The smell of bread, even if it
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: is only the bread of someone else's baking drifting in
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: through an open window. The way a particular pair of
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: socks feels when you put them on after a long day.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: The look of the sky at that precise moment just
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: after sunset, when the blue has not yet decided whether
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: it is going to give way to black or hold
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: on for one more hour. These are the small, persistent joys.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: They are everywhere. They have been everywhere your whole life.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: And they are, quite literally, the texture of a happy existence.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: A life without them would be a life of grand
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: events and no feeling. A life with them, and you
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: already have them, is a life that is at every
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: moment offering you something quietly precious if only you are
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: willing to notice. I want you to make a small
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: shelf for these joys in your garden. The shelf does
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: not need to be large. It can be a single
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: flagstone at the entrance. The first thing you see when
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: you walk through the gate. And on this shelf, I
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: want you to put one joy from today. Not the
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: biggest joy. Not the most impressive one. Just one. The cat.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: The tea. The way the sky looked at that particular moment.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Place a dare. Look at it. That is the first
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: planting in tonight's garden. The second bed is the bed
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: of difficulties. This is the bed that no gardener wants,
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: but every garden has. The difficulties are the things that
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: have gone wrong, or are going wrong, or are threatening
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: to go wrong. The argument you had this morning, the
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: bill you are not sure how you will pay, the
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: appointment you have been putting off, the quiet, Persistent worry
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: about something you cannot quite name, the way you cannot
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: quite name the source of a low hum in an
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: otherwise silent house. Most of us, when we come to
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: this bed, do one of two things. We either refuse
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: to look at it, we walk past quickly, eyes averted,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: as though the weeds in it might somehow grow taller
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: if we acknowledge them, Or we stare at it until
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: we cannot see anything else. The way you stare at
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: a splinter until it becomes the entire body. The garden
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: teaches a third way. The third way is to kneel
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: down beside the bed the way Gardner kneels and look
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: at what is actually there. Not what you fear is there.
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: Not what you imagine is there. What is actually there?
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: and you will find, almost always, that the difficulty is
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: smaller in person than it was in your imagination. The
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: argument was about something specific and that something specific is,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: if you sit with it long enough, addressable. The bill
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: is a number, and numbers, however large, are negotiable. The appointment,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: when you finally make it, will turn out to be
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: 45 minutes long and then it will be over. The
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: gardener's relationship to difficulty is not denial and not obsession,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: it is patient inspection. It is the willingness to look
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: and the willingness to keep looking until the difficulty reveals
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: itself to be what it actually is rather than the
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: monster your tired mind has been making of it in
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: the dark. And if when you look, the difficulty is
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: still hard, and sometimes it will be, you can do
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: what every gardener does. You can put down your tools.
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: You can sit on the path beside the bed. You
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: can look at the sky instead of the weeds. You
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: can give yourself permission to come back to it tomorrow.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: The garden will still be here tomorrow. The gardener does
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: not have to solve everything in one afternoon. The third
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: bed is the bed of unfinished things. This is a
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: bed I think about a great deal because I am
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: someone who has many unfinished things, unfinished letters, unfinished thoughts,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: unfinished cups of tea, cold on my desk, unfinished conversations,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: the kind where you think of the perfect thing to
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: say three hours after the other person has left. The
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: bed of unfinished things is full of the ghosts of
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: good intentions. We meant to do them. We will do them.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: We will. Do them tomorrow, or the day after, or
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: the year after that. And meanwhile they sit in our
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: garden and make us feel, every time we walk past,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: that we have somehow failed. But here's the thing I
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: have learned. Slowly, Over many years of being someone with
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: far more unfinished things than finished ones, the unfinished things
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: are not failures. They are evidence of a life that
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: has been lived outward. A person with no unfinished things
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: is a person who has stopped beginning. A garden with
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: no empty beds is a garden that has stopped growing.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: You are allowed to have unfinished things. You are allowed
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: to leave them in their beds, watered or not, for
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: as long as they need to be there. Some of
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: them will, in time, call to you again, and you
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: will pick them up and finish them with a strange
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: feeling of grace, as though the finishing was always going
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: to happen but had to wait for the right season.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: Some of them you will let go of entirely and
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: you will find, to your surprise, that letting go is
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: not a failure either. It is a kind of composting.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: The unfinished thing becomes soil. The soil becomes something else.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: The garden keeps growing. The fourth bed is the bed
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: of love. This bed is the largest. even though it
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: sometimes looks the smallest. The bed of love is the
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: place in the garden where you keep the people you love,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: the people you have loved, the people you are learning
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: to love, the people you have loved and lost and
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: who are still here in the garden, even though they
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: are not in the house. I think, sometimes, that we
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: have been taught to keep love outside the garden. We
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: have been taught that love is a thing that happens
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: in the world, between people, in rooms, in conversations, in
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: long evenings with music and laughter and the particular warmth
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: of being with someone who sees you. And that is true.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: That is all true. But love is also a thing
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: that lives in the mind. Love is also a planting.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Love is something you tend. Love is the bed you
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: water most often. Because if you do not water it,
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: it does not die all at once. It goes on
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: for a while, looking like itself. But underneath the soil
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: the roots are drying, and by the time you notice,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: The work of recovery is much harder than the work
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: of prevention would have been. So, water the bed of love. Often,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: with small attentions, a letter written without a reason, a
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: phone call that is just to say you are thinking
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: of someone, a pause in your day to bring a
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: face to mind, deliberately, the way you would bring a
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: flyer to your nose to smell it. The person on
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: the other end of that attention may never know you
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: did it. That is not the point. The point is
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: that you did it. The point is the watering. The
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: fifth and last bed is the bed of self. This
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: is the bed in the center of the garden and
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: the others, in a way all face toward it. The
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: bed of self is where you tend your own becoming,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: not the self you were. Yesterday, not the self you
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: hope to be in some far of future. The self
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: that you are right now, in this moment, in this breath,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: in this greenhouse, with these plants, with this candle, with me.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: The bed of self is not a bed of perfection.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: It is not a place where you go to admire
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: yourself or to polish yourself until you shine. It is
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: a place where you go to know yourself. To know
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: the shape of your own tiredness. To know the flavor
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: of your own joy. To know the texture of your
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: own grief and to recognize it when it arrives and
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: not to be frightened of it. Because you have seen
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: it before and you have survived it before and you
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: will survive it again. The bed of self is the
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: place where you say, very quietly, to the only person
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: who will hear you. I am here. I am here.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: I am here. And that, in the end, is all
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: the garden needs. The garden does not need you to
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: be perfect. The garden does not need you to be impressive.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: The garden needs you to be present. The garden needs
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: you to walk through the gate, slowly. the way you
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: would walk through any beautiful place on a quiet evening
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: with your hands relaxed at your sides and your breath
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: steady and your eyes willing to see what is actually
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: in front of you rather than what you expect. Things think.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Think I'm nothing I was looking of a struff mistake
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: to have right on. So the sun places, changing like
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: a stewed, I'd sauce my shadow axe to some of health, Woolara, Dalman,
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: and Clishd Arrows. And one time, for all time, a
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: Staller and Foie, a much percent of March of Places, Stone, who,
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Bwata senses itness in her, I think about all the
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: gardens I have ever known, the gardens of the people
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: I have loved, The gardens of the people I've only
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: heard of. The gardens of strangers I will never meet.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Each one is different. Each one is beautiful. Each one
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: is full of things the gardener has not yet learned
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: to see and full of things the gardener has not
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: yet learned to let go of. And full of things
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: the gardener has been carrying so long that they have
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: become part of the soil. I think about how brave
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: it is, really, to tend a garden at all. We
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: live in a world that tells us to rush. We
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: live in a world that tells us that the point
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: of a thing is its productivity. We live in a
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: world that measures gardens by what they yield, and yields
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: by how quickly they can be harvested and harvesters by
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: how many gardens they can manage in a single day.
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: and against all that pressure. You, tonight, have chosen to
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: sit down in a greenhouse with a candle and a
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: slow voice and have given yourself 30 minutes to do
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: nothing at all except feel your own breath and notice
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: your own becoming. That is brave. That is also wise.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: And it is also, I want you to know, exactly,
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: the right thing to do. Somewhere outside the greenhouse, an
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: owl calls. The sound is muffled by the glass, made
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: soft and far away, the way a real owl sounds
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: when you hear it on the edge of sleep. Somewhere
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: inside the greenhouse, a leaf uncurls. Somewhere inside the greenhouse,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: a root drinks. Somewhere inside the greenhouse, the smallest, most
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: patient processes of growth are happening in the dark, in
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: the warm, in the silence, asking nothing of you except
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: that you do not interrupt them. I think about what
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: I would tell you, if I could tell you only
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: one thing, before you stood up from this bench and
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: walked back through the iron door and back into the night.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: And I think the one thing is this, there is
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: a garden inside you that has been growing, without your
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: permission since the day you were born. It is the
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: garden of your own attention. It is the garden of
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: your own breath. It is the garden of your own becoming.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: And it is beautiful. It has always been beautiful. And
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: the only thing standing between you and the full experience
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: of that beauty is the willingness to walk through the
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: gate slowly and sit down and stay. So, stay a
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: little longer. The candle is still burning. The plants are
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: still breathing. The greenhouse is still warm. And I am
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: still here. And you are still here. And the night
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: is long. And there is no hurry. And no one
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: is waiting for us. And no one is going to
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: ask us to explain where we have been. Brave with me.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: The garden is yours. It has always been yours. And
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: I want to tell you one more thing before you go.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: Somewhere in your garden tonight, even if you cannot see
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: it yet, there is a small green shoot that has
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: just broken through the soil. It is the youngest thing
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: in your garden. It is the most fragile. And it
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: is the thing I am most proud of you for,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: because it grew out of the simple, stubborn act of
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: listening to a slow voice. in a quiet greenhouse for
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: 30 minutes of your tired September evening. That shoot is
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: the willingness you have just shown to slow down, to breathe,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: to let something be soft with you, to not be
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: in a hurry, to not be solving anything, to just be.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: Tend that suit. Tomorrow, water it. Tomorrow night, when you
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: lie down to sleep, Place your hand on your chest
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: and feel the warmth of your own heartbeat, the way
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: I once placed my hand against the iron door of
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: this greenhouse and felt the warmth of the stones giving
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: back the heat of the day. That warmth is yours.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: It has always been yours. You did not have to
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: do anything to deserve it. You only had to notice it.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Good night and sweet dreams.