April 18, 2015
Plant Yourself in God's Garden and then go forth Offering God's Tender Mercies.
I have a vision of a beautiful spiral....at its center is my person....each of us lives in a beautiful spiral....we may not be aware of it....but we do. Around the center of the person....the planted seed...is God's Garden. Which is always with us to nourish us and sustain us and allow us to be healthy, vibrant, loving people who can offer the world God's tender mercies....
To stay planted in God's Garden requires of us some awareness and action. In God's garden there are many gifts. One of them is the natural world. We need to craft each day with time and attention outside in nature. We need to be kissed by the sun, the moon, the wind and the rain. Our faces need the color of vitality and brightness. Even during difficult winters......intentional time by a window...observing nature. God also gave us movement. Time devoted to movement....God created us to move....long walks...dancing....chair exercise...yoga...sports.... God also gave us the arts....we need to enjoy music, art, theater on a daily basis. And of course God gave us good loving people to be in the community garden with.
God also gave us nourishment. Plants and mushrooms and fish to eat. But also plants, mushrooms, fish and friendly probiotics to heal us. The best healing medicines most world cultures have used for millenia come from plants, mushrooms, fish and probiotics. When I first started to learn about herbal and holistic medicine a whole new world was opened up to me. I saw the wonder of God's creation so much more clearly. Just a few wondrous examples:
- The bright orange spice turmeric of cooking curries is the best anti-inflammatory medicine available. It alleviates the pain of aching joints.
- Chamomile tea has excellent calming stress relieving properties and you can buy it at the grocery store.
- Medicinal mushrooms are used extensively in Asia to prevent the re-occurence of cancers. There is much scientific evidence to support their use. I have seen medicinal mushrooms alleviate allergy symptoms, keep lyme disease in remission and alleviate the inflammation of autoimmune conditions such as sarcoidosis.
- Fish offer us so many nutrients...an excellent healthy affordable fish are these wonderful portugese sardines which I have prepared for the potluck...they are low in salt and high in healing nutrients such as anti-inflammatory essential fatty acids, vitamin D and A.
- Cod liver oil is especially good medicine during the dark, cold winters...it adds light to the soul and noursihment to the body.
And last but not least God's Garden of probiotics offered in yoghurts, kefir, pickled vegetables and vinegars. The probiotics of our bodies are the guardians of our health. I have had many patients whose bodies have been compromised by the over use of antibiotics...they have raging fungal infections on their skin and other vital organs...they have lost the ability to digest their food...they are wracked with pain. They are depressed and live in a mental fog...all an effect of toxic yeast overgrowth as a result of over use of antibiotics.
The major effort to restore their health, centers around restoring their probiotics or friendly bacteria. Intensive probiotic treatments can be a heroic life saving therapy for them. God's garden of wonder includes the community of friendly bacteria that populate all the tissues of our body in large numbers. Contemplate the skin on your arm---there is a velvety microscopic layer of beautiful microbes --a garden as it were---keeping your arm free of lesions and sores. Our lives literally depend on these microbes....they assist in the digestion of our food...without them we literally would starve to death. Sadly I have seen it happen.
So where in scripture is all of this supported ? Or is this the nature lover-herbalist-nurse of 25 years personal rant? Well ofcourse we start with the first chapters of Genesis--chapters we should read over and over on a regular basis. We need to stay in touch with the wonder and the miracle of life especially as we go forward out into the world offering our tender mercies in the face of the terrible tradgedies and violence that face us everyday. Also many of the Psalms call us to restore ourselves in nature--especially Psalm 23. This is what Jesus did over and over...he had his restorative time away in the mountains and the wilderness and then came back. He walked the land with his disciples--they were outside in the natural world most of their days. He performed miracles of healing and so did his disciples as described in the chapters we are now reading in Acts as part of our Easter Season.
The Old and New Testament has many references to nature and healing with plants. A mentor friend of mine Dr. James Duke, who has a beautiful herbal medicine teaching garden just beyond Silver Spring Maryland, wrote a book called the Herbs of the Bible. Up until the early to mid 20th century most of the healing around the world occurred with plant medicine for the many millenia of human civilization. Modern medicine has brought us many new miraculous therapies and medicines but we must not be uprooted from the healing offered by the natural world...The two types of healing modern and ancient can complement each other --making their joint healing power much greater than either approach by itself.
This message I share with you today is a serious call---to replant yourselves in God's Garden and return to the restorative powers of the natural world. Our modern world and lifestyle is very threatening to our well being as individuals and communities. The violence, suicides, drug/alcohol abuse and alienation of so many of our young people would not happen on the scale it does, if we were all closer to God and God's healing spaces in nature. It is so easy to get discouraged, depressed with all the headlines and images of human destruction and violence. Also if we are not nourishing our bodies with the sun, with movement and the arts and with a rainbow of fruits and vegetables, with healing foods such as fish and live foods rich in probiotics we will become depleted biologically and feel tired and depressed. So when you are feeling down, replant yourself in God's Garden, renourish your body and soul and surround yourself with loving good people who will join you there. A good opportunity to do this is spending time out at Day Spring and volunteering in their Biodynamic Garden or join me in my volunteering at Dr. Jim Duke's herbal medicine teaching garden. Then you will be able to restore and go out and offer God's loving tender mercies to the world.