FINDING GOD IN THE GARDEN

Brickner, a Reform rabbi for 45 years, uses the garden as a viewing lens for such big religious and philosophical issues as our ethical comportment, our approach to death, God's character, and the nature of sex and love.

Working away in the garden, it has often occurred to Brickner that “if I looked up, I would better understand what was going on when I looked down, and vice versa.” He takes plenty of cues from the garden, but they serve mostly as jumping-off points for an extended ramble through his religious rationalism. For those with a mind to it, God is in the garden as in the cosmos, the lawful orderly universe. Brickner has little to say on the matters of chaos and improbability, not because he doesn't recognize them—he knows luck and weeds and the random workings of fate as well as anyone—but because he believes in cultivating a body of understanding that helps address such issues when they burst forth. We can absorb and learn. Free will gives us the ability and responsibility to act; hopefully, our deeds reflect the positive ethical values we associate with the divine. Balance can give perspective and harmony; “we find answers to our prayers by concentrating on the best we can think, feel, and then decide to do.” Brickner has sharp things to say about patience, memory, and loss, the role of miracles in an orderly universe, and about the interplay of moral, ethical, and factual truths in the pseudo-debate of science versus religion—they complement one another, as everyone from Brickner to Stephen Jay Gould has written. Not least, he has wise things to say about the necessity of a Sabbath day each week for rest, serenity, and reflection.

Good, sweaty work: all this turning of the spirit’s and mind’s soil yields a nourishing outlook on life.