Tuesday, July 31, 2007

The Order of Things

I’ve been watching the old TV series “Upstairs, Downstairs,” and also “The Duchess of Duke Street,” both of which deal with the class system as it existed in England up until World War I and the collapse of this system as a consequence of the war. I’ve been intrigued because both series are so well written and well produced, and the acting is superb, but they also deal with a subject I enjoy wrestling with -- the basic order of things throughout the world, throughout nature. In my garden I watch the birds and I see a very clear pecking order. If anyone steps out of line, he is quickly brought back into line by the rest. It was fascinating to see in these series that whatever class you were in, life operated the same way. The people downstairs, the servants, had a pecking order, with the butler at the top and then the chief cook, Mrs. Bridges, and on down the line, with footmen, and ladies maids, and scullery maids and, finally, the lowest of the low – the poor boy or girl who everybody could pick on.

As this system breaks down, you see the ultimate dilemma of the democracies. You take away one class system, but another one is going to take its place, because that is the natural order of things. There will always be rulers, whether they are supposedly democratically elected, or whether they inherit their power. The bottom line is that there’s somebody above all of us who is setting all this up and deciding who’s what, and we’re all going to learn the same lessons before we’re done with our journey, whether we’re rich or poor, strong or weak.

The garden reminds me again that it is this basic order of things that brings us what degree of security we do manage to feel in a world that appears to be so chaotic. The fact is, there’s great order behind the chaos, and you only have to spend some time in a garden before you become aware of the order that is here and the power that is being exerted to hold all of this together, and how magnificent it is, just totally beyond our understanding. Mine are the babblings of a child, because that’s all I’m capable of doing as I look around me and am overwhelmed by this beauty. I also feel my frustration at the imperfection of it all, as it appears to us, the constant loss that we experience, the frustration of watching plans that we have made for so long crumble before our eyes, until we understand that this is just all part of growing up, and we begin to realize how the world really is and not just how we’re told it is.

I just love the story of the little boy and the emperor’s new clothes. There I am. There’s Johnny. All my life, I’ve stood at the feet of this huge crowd and everybody has been cheering and getting so excited about something that I just don’t see, and what I do see, I’m convinced others must see also, and so there I have been all my life saying, “What is the matter with you people? Don’t you see the way it really is?” And of course they don’t, because it’s not their time yet, and the few who do are frightened, because they thought that they were the crazy ones. It’s all just part of the great play, isn’t it, so back to the garden, where my mind is free to explore a whole range of subjects and be open to whatever insights the gods choose to give me this day, and then according to their whim cause me to forget the next day. Back to the present moment, with the blue sky, the mountains all around me, palm trees, the fragrance of the jasmine in bloom, the roses, and the herbs, the coming and going of the birds, and the music of the water in the fountains.

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