A Quote by Joris-Karl Huysmans
There's no doubt about it - gardeners are the only true artists these days.
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I think gardening is nearer to godliness than theology. True gardeners are both iconographers and theologians insofar as these activities are the fruit of prayer 'without ceasing.' Likewise, true gardeners never cease to garden, not even in their sleep, because gardening is not just something they do. It is how they live.
There are no green thumbs or black thumbs. There are only gardeners and non-gardeners. Gardeners are the ones who ruin after ruin get on with the high defiance of nature herself, creating, in the very face of her chaos and tornado, the bower of roses and the pride of irises. It sounds very well to garden a 'natural way'. You may see the natural way in any desert, any swamp, any leech-filled laurel hell. Defiance, on the other hand, is what makes gardeners.
Many of us believe that 'real artists' do not experience self-doubt. In truth, artists are people who have learned to live with doubt and do the work anyway.
There are many tired gardeners but I've seldom met old gardeners. I know many elderly gardeners but the majority are young at heart. Gardening simply does not allow one to be mentally old, because too many hopes and dreams are yet to be realized. The one absolute of gardeners is faith. Regardless of how bad past gardens have been, every gardener believes that next year's will be better. It is easy to age when there is nothing to believe in, nothing to hope for, gardeners, however, simply refuse to grow up.
Chinese martial artists consider themselves to be gardeners, and it's an honor for them to take care of this garden, to better it and hand it over to the generations that follow. I think that's a very important message in a time when personal achievement seems to be the only criteria of success.
There is something insane about a lack of doubt. Doubt - to me, anyway - is what makes you human, and without doubt, even the righteous lose their grip, not only on reality but also on their humanity.
The starting-point and chief principle of every science, and hence of theology also, is not only methodical doubt, but positive doubt. One can believe only what one has perceived to be true from reasonable grounds, and consequently one must have the courage to continue doubting until one has found reliable grounds to satisfy the reason.
There are two kinds of writers. There are architects and gardeners. The architects do blueprints before they drive the first nail. The gardeners just dig a hole and plant the seed and see what comes up.
An intellectual is going to have doubts, for example, about a fundamentalist religious doctrine that admits no doubt, about an imposed political system that allows no doubt, about a perfect aesthetic that has no room for doubt.
When we talk about contemporary art and contemporary artists, we usually imagine artists who are alive. But I feel very uncomfortable about placing a border between living artists and dead artists.
True gardeners cannot bear a glove Between the sure touch and the tender root.
There are a lot days where I don't know if God exists. There are a lot of days where I think the leadership of the Church is wacky, a lot of days where I really doubt why I am a part of this thing. But, down deep, I know it to be true. Down deep, I know how much I love it and that's what sort of gets me through. The churches are the pope, and its priests and its mystery and everything. I just sort of like the whole thing.
It's only when it's smoothed out by history and we try to make sense of it - this incredibly complicated period when everyone's doing something different every day - that we look for those stylistic similarities and we say, "Well, that's what that was about," and sort of forget all the other nuance. I definitely feel that that's true for this time in my community of artists, and I'm sure that it was true at other times too.
Auditioning is a horrible experience because you know you are being absolutely scrutinized and judged. There are days where you can do it and days where it's just not happening, and I feel like that's how it is with all artists; you have some days it kind of works.
Whether we are poets or parents or teachers or artists or gardeners, we must start where we are and use what we have. In the process of creation and relationship, what seems mundane and trivial may show itself to be a holy, precious part of a pattern.
A flower is not a flower. It is made only of non-flower elements - sunshine, clouds, time, space, earth, minerals, gardeners, and so on. A true flower contains the whole universe. If we return any one of these non-flower elements to its source, there will be no flower.
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