A Gardener in a War

on resilience + rebellious hope

Welcome to Slow Folk - a community for gentle hearts and rebellious creatives, thirsty for a slower life in a world obsessed with speed.

Welcome to the Unbusy Revolution.

There is a Chinese proverb that goes something like this :

It is better to be a warrior in a garden, than to be a gardener in a war.

I’ve been thinking about that lately, as I struggle to sit down to write, to manifest any word other than ceasefire on the screen.

Here at home we have wrestled with grief and unasked for change while we watch the outside world unravel.

When things come apart at the seams, quietly, softly, unseen or exploding among sleeping babes, the warrior bit makes sense, doesn’t it? What mother doesn’t want to grab the world by its shoulders and shake it, screaming, to its senses?

And yet, I wonder.

What if, maybe, in times of war, gardeners are exactly who we need?

I am a farmer. I never meant to become a farmer. This isn’t the life I’d planned. But here I am, on the front porch of our 1892 farmhouse, overlooking gardens and pastures we’ve been slowly loving back to life for over a decade.

Well over 20 years into my relationship with the soil, the more I learn, the less I know. I stand in awe of the miraculous processes that circle around and within and through me.

The mycelium creeping underfoot, climbing unseen within the body of the cottonwood tree, exploding into fruit high in the sky when conditions are just so.

That mysterious and ever-present movement of birth, death, decay and round again happening simultaneously within the microscopic galaxies within me and in the unseen stars above.

The way the sheep clustered calmly around me and held their faces and warm sweet breath against my cheek as I sobbed my grief into being.

I don’t know how or why my body and the soil and the stars and the mycelium are connected. All I know is that they are.

---

---

What if this un/knowing holds the key, the antidote to the brutal certainty of war?

And I don’t just mean the literal wars that are currently raging around the globe. I mean this ever present, omnipotent rage we all find ourselves steeped in.

War is about knowing we are right. About finding within ourselves rules and reasons to justify bombing children while they sleep. To divide the world into us and them, to tell ourselves that we know everything about them and none of it is good.

Gardening well is about knowing little. About seeing connections, not division, everywhere.

We are called to be always watching, always listening, always learning. To turn our face to the sky with awe and humility and thanks.

Mary Oliver commands - Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

This, as a gardener who writes, is my true and worthy life’s work.

In an era of proxy-wars between nuclear superpowers, planting seeds for an uncertain future can feel like a fool’s errand. But what if it’s not?

What if planting flowers, if sowing seeds, is a quiet, powerful act of rebellion?

What if hope in the face of immeasurable human suffering and despair for our future is the most defiant act of resilience and resistance we can summon?

What if planting flowers and tending fields is an act of contrarian sanity in a world gone mad? What if vibrant, resilient, self-generating, self-healing, soul and body nourishing spaces, carved out from the misery and darkness are actually essential reservoirs of possibility? Of humanity? Of hope?

Plant your own garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers. ― Jorge Luis Borges

---

---

What does it mean to choose hope when there are so many reason not to?

When the world around us feels like it is spinning out of control, choosing to lay claim to a sense of hope, no matter how fragile, is an act of personal agency.

And really, how do we expect anything to ever be better if we don’t use what power we have to steward that better future forward? What if that act of hope doesn’t have to be a grand gesture? What if it can both recognize our lack of control while simultaneously claiming what little control we do have?

How can we cultivate reservoirs of hope within ourselves during dark days?

How can we build pools of resilience, from which we can drink when the world outside is parched with madness?

Slowness, for me, has been that cool pool.

Because slow living for me isn’t about wearing linen or drinking pour-over coffee or some superficial aesthetic. It is about being present and alive to my own life. This presence, this act of paying attention, of practicing gratitude even - especially - when I feel like I have nothing to be grateful for . . . This is how we fill that internal pool of hope. These are the waters we drink from when the world is deserted of its humanity.

By practicing presence and compassion for ourselves, we increase our capacity for compassion for others. It allows us to remember -

There, but the by the grace of God, go I.

And I don’t just mean those poor souls in Gaza or Sudan or Ukraine or Ethiopia or countless other places where the worst of human nature is on garish, heartbreaking display.

It also allows us to embrace that un/knowing to make space for those we fight in other kinds of wars.

Those who don’t think like us. Who don’t vote like us. Those who choose other ways of being in the world. Those whom we are told by Power are less-than, the enemy.

Slowness has helped me cultivate hope by nourishing quiet space for independent thought. When I turn off the firehose of rage and misinformation, I gift myself the wealth of my own perspective. Slowness allows us to not only look, but truly see. As we take a step back, quiet the noise, we find our own inner voice returning.

This, in and of itself, is a rebellious act of hope. To trust that that voice, so long drowned out by those who profit from our self-doubt and distraction, is still there, still may have something of value to say, has a wisdom of its own - is a revolutionary act.

---

Stacey Langford is a writer, renegade farmer and slow business mentor living and working in Canada’s Fraser Valley. In 2010 Stacey ditched her cubicle in the city to turn her attention homeward, farm and help others craft a simple life, from scratch.