George Washington Carver, an accomplished botanist, inventor and educator was born on the eve of the Civil War. In his own words, "I was just a mere boy when converted, hardly ten years old. There isn't much of a story to it. God just came into my heart one afternoon while I was alone in the 'loft' of our big barn while I was shelling corn to carry to the mill….”
— G. W. Carver; Letter to Isabelle Coleman; July 24, 1931
While training with my mentor in the NYBG Conservatory he showed me how to decipher the categories and age of plant life - I found the how, what, where, and when fascinating. But what gnawed at me was the WHY.
As I dug deep with both my hands and mind to delve into this totally mysterious natural world, I noticed an incredibly strong connection between plant life and our humanity. As I studied and tended to the plant kingdom it engendered a feeling of reverence that started to move into all life.
But this at first struck a disheartening chord within me. I can palpably recall my disillusionment and disappointment swelling up. Until that point I'd been able to think my way into, through, around and out of any situation. But this was different. There was no way to get around it, through it, beyond it. This was no longer an equation that could be explained by an eloquent formula. It could not be placed in a box and tied with a beautiful ribbon to be tucked away into a far corner of my mind for later examination. No, this had a different ring to it. The thought of it became terrifying because I could just barely glimpse the edge and peer into the unfathomable depth of existence before it would evaporate.
Soon I began to wonder - if there's no goal, no endgame, no edge, no border and IT’s all contained w/in ITSELF, can there ever be a way for us to completely step outside of this picture? And if not, what is the reason It works this way?
By posing these basic questions so many more questions popped up. What is the purpose of God re-producing itself? Is IT so bored with Itself, Its Oneness, Its Sameness, to create this seemingly fractured existence within Its being? Does It endlessly throw out a projected reality, a paradigm of Itself? Does this explain the physics of the ever expansion of the universe?
Catching a glimpse of clarity here and there as I go through my daily tasks I begin to question: isn’t watching TV, movies, computer games akin to God issuing images/mockups that we see as our other existence? Is this why we sometimes confuse our 'real' life with these projections. And just maybe this can then explain an heinous story I had just heard about young children wantonly committing crimes against each other as they act out 'in real life' what they watched on a computer screen. Is this the same way God issues forth images and fragments of Itself to the extent that we then think war is the solution?
Within our existence - Life - there can be no beginning and no ending. Unlike a TV channel, we can’t simply turn the picture off at will, slip off the couch and close the door behind us. There isn’t any hole we can fall into to fake/take exclusion from it – not even suicide! We simply can't get away from it.
Then Death isn’t “The End” but simply a transformation analogous to plants decaying as they age - starting the cycle all over again to become the nutrients that feed life anew. There’s an undeniable love and support that underlies this process of seeming separateness. A giving for the sake of giving because, in reality, there isn't any difference between the giver and the recipient.
The lesson may be to work together as One because that's what we are. All bad deeds are hurting a part of ourselves - an arm, a leg, a beat of our heart.