I've been trying to catch up on weeding my garden this past week. I find it a surprisingly soothing thing to do once I get to it. Sometimes, the hard part is just motivating myself to go out and tackle that particular chore. But I've spent more time than I'm accustomed to inside buildings, out of touch with Outside, during the last few weeks. I find myself craving Outside, so I have found it easy to want to set about this chore. The fact that it hasn't gotten too hot and humid the way it usually does this time of year, that helps too. And considering the amounts of blessed rain we've been getting, and my usual attractiveness to mosquitoes, I haven't been too harrassed by those little blood-suckers.

Today I wanted to work on a section of my garden that had become quite choked with violets. I love violets but they bloom early in the season and then grow recklessly the rest of the summer, knotting themselves into clumps here and there until soon there are edge to edge knuckles with leaves attached. Room for very little else.

As I weed, my thinking mind begins to quiet down. Or a certain kind of thinking ceases. I become a little like a machine, pressing hand trowel deep into the earth at the base of a clump of violets and then lifting it up. A toss onto the driveway. My hands and arms get tired. I know that tomorrow my shoulders will be a little sore and my hands always feel vaguely swollen after weeding.

All I see are the many clumps of violets there are to remove.

Gradually another kind of thinking returns. This doesn't always happen. Sometimes I never seem to get to the point of having conscious thought disappear. I find instead that my activity has, for companion, my own mind thinking of what I need to do, or what I have already done, replaying activities from the preceeding week or worrying about some problem. But today I was free of that chatter. I found I could focus on my task and on the many things there were to see---a tiny birdcage which was the remnant of a seed pod from a poppy. All the of 'skin' of the seed pod had rotted away and left the structure behind, a series of slender bars from stem to crown, open and waiting for a tiny bird.

There were the knuckles, more accurately, the rhizomes of the violets with their white threads that anchor them deeper into the earth.

A scarab sat on one leaf, coppery and green, beautiful, though not always welcome in one's garden. A Japanese beetle we would call it here, though it is a member of the family of bugs that include scarabs. It sat with two of its legs lifted up.

Several pine tree seedlings were also among the violets. The seedlings were only a couple of inches tall. I discovered some years ago that if I pulled up a pine seedling, no matter how tiny, and brought the tiny tap root to my nose, I could detect the fragrance of pine. Ever since making this discovery, I always take the time to enjoy that pine essence. I find myself thinking that if that pine aroma is present in a tiny seedling, part of the essentialness of pine-ness, then perhaps there is something similarly essential in each of us. And whatever our unique quality may be, like the pine, it is there, detectable from the very beginning.

Each time I removed a violet, I thought of adding space and the importance of space. Each violet takes up not only room, but water and nutrients. Removing them would make water and nutrients more available to other plants.

Words came to me from some years ago. I have tried to find the written copy but the weeds within my house seem to have obscured its resting space. So words repeated themselves in my mind as I recall them, though perhaps not exactly as they were written: Cut brambles one by one, and you will reveal the lotus blossom within, the lotus which is and has always been there. I recall this fragment from a teacher who'd given it to me some years ago. It was translated from the writings of a woman sage who lived centuries ago in China as I recall. My recollection is that she had had an earnest desire to live the life of a monk, to learn what those who seek a monastic life have the opportunity to learn. Maybe because she was a woman, she was turned away. Or perhaps there was some other reason. Instead, she raised a family. And when she was in her mid-fifties, and her family was grown and gone, she sought again a life that allowed more time for reflection. She became a very great and respected sage.

Cut brambles, one by one...This thought resurfaces in my mind periodically. I like the practicalness of it. Brambles will grow repeatedly. There is, perhaps, little hope of eradicating them entirely. Instead, there is the understanding that all I can do is work methodically to eliminate them. The brambles become a symbol of those things that threaten to choke out deeper understanding--the lotus--that is already present but hidden. Cut brambles, one by one. Dig violets, clump by clump. Pull weeds one at time. Again. And again. And again.

As I continue working, adding space, another thought appears. I think of an art history term, horror vacuui. This term is used to describe a way of working with a surface. It has to do with filling up all of the empty spaces, leaving as little white or open space as possible. I believe the term means, literally, horror of vacant space. Those of you with a background in Latin may be more precise than I can be.

This way of working with a surface has been used by various peoples as long as there have been image makers. Some familiar examples would be works from Egypt, interiors of tombs and pyramids that are covered with images and hieroglyphics. A similar method was used in some of the existing codices from the Aztecs. I think a case could be made that the outer surfaces of late Gothic cathedrals also show this horror vacuui, so encrusted with statuary and decoration they are.

As I thought of this horror vacuui that appears in visual arts, I thought of my garden and that nature does the same thing. Create a space and something will come to fill it. It may be another weed. But with thought and effort, it may be a plant I've chosen for that space. Space doesn't remain open for long.

The same horror vacuui seems to exist in the lives of people, too. We fill up the empty spaces in our days, often not at ease, not content to allow the empty spaces to exist. Something rushes in to fill that time---laundry that must be done, children here or there, soccer games to attend,watch TV, reading the backs of cereal boxes while we eat and so forth. It isn't that any of these things are inherently bad things to do. But in my opinion they can become like the violets in my garden. I intentionally placed those violets in my garden and they happily filled the space. But only be attending to them purposefully can I be assured of having space for both the violets and any other plants I may wish to grow.

Could the urge to fill spaces, this horror vacuui, be something deeply ingrained within all of us, I wonder? Did people who created images with the intention of filling all of the space somehow counteract that urge? I believe that art can serve this kind of function, can provide us with a way to understand and appropriately manifest these instinctive responses to existence. Perhaps a horror of the empty spaces as expressed in art, perhaps that served a function, made concious this unease with emptiness. Without the spaces, it can be hard to see the lotus that is already present.

Cut brambles, one by one...