The Gardener And His Servant

Have you forgotten, love-my-love,
Those heady days at Spring's beginning?
Lovely days of gleamy gray
When all Eternity awoke-
Dancing rain to wash away
The lingered grime of Winter's cloak
From Earth's green, velvet underpinning-
Have you forgotten, love-my-love?

It was half the imagining of an anguished hour, and half a dream- and the dream, and the images, and the words that later poured into my notebook all somehow meshed together, and became this:

The Gardener and His Servant:

'...He looked, with pained tenderness at the trembling creature at His feet- at her wet cheeks, and grief contorted face.
"Child, why do you weep?"
"I weep", she choked, "for the garden of my own planning, which now will never grow- and for the fragile little plants, which now I shall never tend- and for this Rose, which I have loved so much, and whose thorns are now tearing at my heart as I try to root it out."
He stooped to raise her to her feet. "It is a lovely Rose. I crafted it, you know."
"I know, my Lord."
"Do you think that I would create such beauty without purpose? This Rose, like all others, may only come to its fullest flowering in the gardens of my choice."
The girl was silent. Together they watched the wind flowing through the heavy treetops, the iris nodding in sun-warmed, iridescent purple- a fat bumble-bee humming and fumbling at its heart in cheerful contentment. At last, she answered dully.
"How should I know? You have come into my garden asking me to crush its loveliest flower, to not merely yield up the plant which gives me beauty and fragrance beyond all others, but to kill it- to destroy all of its glowing color and burgeoning life. You would leave the choicest bed in my garden, nourished and watered so carefully, a barren, empty hole. I do not know Lord what You intend for this Rose, but only that I do not wish ever to live in a garden where it does not bloom."
He stretched a hand to one full, creamy, pink-flushed blossom which dangled near Him, framed in glossy leaves.
"Sweet, will you trust Me to give you flowers ever so much better than this one, if you only obey Me in this?"
With quivering hands she pushed back the heavy hanging hair from her tear blotched cheeks, and gazed at Him with bluely swimming eyes.
"I do not WANT better flowers- I want only this one! Lord, I do not love it because it is the best, but because it is itself!"
He gazed levelly at her, and she turned away, frightened by both the sternness, and the compassion she read in His face.
"My child, do you remember when I promised you that I withhold NO good thing from those that love Me? There is a beauty and usefulness which I long to achieve in your garden that will never be brought about until you have learned to abide by My wish in such matters. You CANNOT reach your fullest potential while tending this Rose- it cannot reach ITS while tended by you. That which I created for harmony will be reduced to a strident Weed! I am not an arbitrary Gardener. I do not ask you to perform any task which I have not been willing to perform Myself, but this flower you ARE NOT meant to have. It is not intended to bloom in this time and place. Dear heart, believe me when I tell you that, grasped against My will, these petals which seem so rich to you will become the bitterest poison- that these shining thorns will be a hundred knife-thrusts in your rebelling heart."
"But- I cannot bear to give it up."
"Love, you CAN bear! As I bore all for My Father's glory, and for you."
He stretched scarred hands to her in supplication, pierced with the terrible torn marks of nails, and there was something terrifyingly exquisite in the sight of that Rock of strength humbling himself before the ragged girl- in the way He freely cloaked His glory that He might meet her weakness.
Without a word, she turned, and began to yank at the rose bush with desperate vigor. The crimson-green thorns caught cruelly at her hands, and the long, barbed canes lacerated the softness of her arms. But, the bush remained firmly rooted in the garden's soil. Tearfully, she pleaded again:
"My Lord, I cannot."
"You must."
She returned to the wrenching labour, but made no progress. At last, face scratched, and arms bloodied, she collapsed before Him, sobbing.
"Master, I am willing to follow You- I am willing, willing to submit to You- even in THIS, my Lord- but I am too weak! Unless You help me, I am unable."
He stroked her tangled hair, and replied:
"No- you do not have the strength- but rest, love, and see what I will do!"
With that, He strode grimly to the place where the Rose bloomed on unconsciously in the deep, rich soil of its bed. Kneeling beside it, He braced Himself, and began to pull.
The great, curving thorns sank into His arms and hands, and blood gushed again from the old scars. And as she watched, wincingly, she saw His face tensing with pain, until a dew of sweat was beading on His brow, and His face was white with a paleness that was the very mask of Death. For a while, He halted- and it seemed that, rather than straining against the Rose, He was resting, leaning on it for support.
She began to be frightened, thinking: "If this flower stands in the way of His Purpose- and if it is beyond my strength to uproot it- and if not even He is able, then surely this Garden is a mockery, and I have been following only a dream."
But, just when she had begun to utterly despair, she saw Him drawing His strength up for one great heave- and in a moment He stood, tall and powerful- eyes blazing with the pride of victory- holding the verdant shrub aloft in His arms, its creamy blossoms scarlet with His blood, the crumbling dark loam trailing from its maze of silvery roots.
"It is finished, Beloved!" He said, and was gone.
The girl looked round her ravaged garden, seeing only the torn soil, and gaping hole where her Rose had bloomed, and feeling the fearsome smart of her gashed hands.
"I am not sorry", she said- but wept.
That night, her head throbbed with a leaden ache, and the tears came even in her sleep. She seemed to wander through a terrible maze of dreams, and always awoke grief-stricken, and with a keen sense of loss. It was as though she had held the world in her hand, and watched it trickle through her fingers and out of reach over, and over again.
And yet, the morning dawned at last, and she awoke to find a delicious perfume wafting through the garden in an almost tangible cloud. She sat up and looked round- and there, at her feet, and all throughout the garden, were springing up tall, graceful lilies of burning white, with starry glowings of gold in their slender throats, and a sweet, spicy fragrance breathing from every flower. There was an irresistible sense of GROWING in the air- she almost expected to find herself shooting upward as rapidly as the lilies. A strange, joyous melody began to play through her head (which did not ache now at all!)- and then words came, until at last, the song went like this:

'Awake, awake, O Northern wind,
And come, O Southern breeze!
Blow now upon my garden- send
To Him that holds its keys,

My garden's fragrance, spread abroad,
So that He will make haste-
My garden's gate's unbarred for Him-
Its choice fruits He must taste!'

Within an hour, the lilies had blanketed every bare space in her garden- all but the crater which had been the Rose's bed. This lay as darkly as ever amid the white sea of flowers. But she thought of the terrible scars in the Master Gardener's hands, and so, was content to have it left so, a 'wound' upon her garden- blooming there like a crushed and broken blossom from the sunless land of grief and thwarted hopes.
And so things remain.'

"Sometimes life is quite naked and stripped. It offers nothing but thorns; but after a while, the season will again come when it shall be decked anew in foliage, and robed in the most beautiful flowers. This is now for me the time of thorns; but God forbid that I should be cast down by it. I believe your word, best of Fathers. Perhaps I shall yet see in my life when 'patience produces roses.'" -From 'A Basket Of Flowers', by Christoph Von Schmidt