pagan values, latest line
Jun. 13th, 2009 10:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silvermapleIt has been a hard work week and I have not been able to concentrate much for the hoohah. At least for the first pagan values post, the line I'm going to take is respect - specifically respect for the integrity of sentient beings and the rest of the natural world. I want to find a single word that means this, but its probably going to be fail. In searching, though, I did find this quite from William Robinson's The English Flower Garden:
The gardener should follow the true artist, however modestly, in his love for things as they are, in delight in natural form and beauty of flower and tree, if we are to be free from barren geometry, and if our gardens are ever to be pictures. The gardener has not the strenuous work of eye and hand that the artist has, but he has plenty of good work to do:—to choose from ten thousand beautiful living things ; to study their nature and adapt them to his soil and climate; to get the full expression of their beauty; to grow and place them well and in right relation to other things, which is a life-study in itself, in view of the great numbers of the flowers and flowering trees of the world. And as the artist's work is to see and keep for us some of the beauty of landscape, tree, or flower, so the gardener's should be to keep for us as far as may be, in the fulness of their natural beauty, the living things themselves. The artist gives us the fair image : the gardener is the trustee of a world of fair living things, to be kept with care and knowledge in necessary subordination to the conditions of his work. And as there is other and higher design than that of the decorator of flat surfaces with patterns, so there is an absolute and eternal difference between conventional form as he expresses it, and the true orms of cloud or hill, vale, stream, path, oak, palm and vine, reed and lily. And the first duty of all who care for the garden as a picture is to see these noble natural forms in every part of life and nature, and once they see them they will never mistake decorative patterns for art and beauty in a garden.
I think I'm just going to take this and run. Spiritual Gardening.
The gardener should follow the true artist, however modestly, in his love for things as they are, in delight in natural form and beauty of flower and tree, if we are to be free from barren geometry, and if our gardens are ever to be pictures. The gardener has not the strenuous work of eye and hand that the artist has, but he has plenty of good work to do:—to choose from ten thousand beautiful living things ; to study their nature and adapt them to his soil and climate; to get the full expression of their beauty; to grow and place them well and in right relation to other things, which is a life-study in itself, in view of the great numbers of the flowers and flowering trees of the world. And as the artist's work is to see and keep for us some of the beauty of landscape, tree, or flower, so the gardener's should be to keep for us as far as may be, in the fulness of their natural beauty, the living things themselves. The artist gives us the fair image : the gardener is the trustee of a world of fair living things, to be kept with care and knowledge in necessary subordination to the conditions of his work. And as there is other and higher design than that of the decorator of flat surfaces with patterns, so there is an absolute and eternal difference between conventional form as he expresses it, and the true orms of cloud or hill, vale, stream, path, oak, palm and vine, reed and lily. And the first duty of all who care for the garden as a picture is to see these noble natural forms in every part of life and nature, and once they see them they will never mistake decorative patterns for art and beauty in a garden.
I think I'm just going to take this and run. Spiritual Gardening.