From: davidh@cascade.ens.tek.com (David Hatcher)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: The smell of flowers (Re: OCA Initiative (was: Family values defined))
Summary: Give a friend a flower.
Keywords: More real long term good can be had by planting flowers.
Date: 16 Oct 92 17:02:19 GMT
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton,  OR.

In article <1992Oct13.183121.20800@blaze.cs.jhu.edu> arromdee@jyusenkyou.cs.jhu.edu (Ken Arromdee) writes:
>If you've ever tried to raise a garden, I suspect you would not be saying this.

  If it really means anything, I've been a gardener for over 30 years. I'm 
also a past president of the Portland chapter of Oregon Tilth. We teach and
promote organic gardening and farming. For 3 years, I did the newletter
layout for that organization. Right now, I'm working a garden that is a 
good 70ft by 70ft in size. I've been to numerious seminars and workshops 
on and about gardening. And I do control weeds by planting flowers. And 
I know a LOT of folks who do the same. It not only makes for a more beautiful 
garden, it sure helps to cut down on the work to maintain it. I also use 
mulch, which is just another way to feed the flowers that I plant while at
the same time providing a furtile ground for worma and micro-organisms, 
which are the real source for good and healty tilth. I've taken on an 
attitude that my garden is not something I have to fight inorder to control 
weeds. I work with it with the way nature works. It's much more enjoyable 
through this approach, and clearly, my yard is showing the fruits from this 
approach that others do not show.

  It's an attitude of working with life with a loving heart that is attuned
to the life forces at work and working with them, not against them. This is
not working backwards from what I want God to be like, like you claimed in 
most of the posting that I'm responding to here. Instead, I see this as a
working with life and attuned to the Creating Love that is the very essence 
of God and how that creating energy is manifested within life itself.

>It looks to me that you're trying to work backwards from what you want God to
>do, to figure out the right way to run a garden, instead of really looking
>at a garden and then working forwards from this to figure out things about
>God, like you claim.

  Actually, I feel that you could not be more wrong. 

  I feel that this has a lot to do with the difference between God being
approached from an attitude of "experience from within" as compared to
approaching God with an attitude of "beliefs from without".

  Life itself is like a garden to God. God is the planter of life and
life is nurtured by God like the garden that it is. 

  When I attune to Jesus, and through that avenue of attunement, I look at 
the attitude in which Jesus carried his ministry along, there also I see
a planter of flowers. He hung out with the sinners and his attitude with 
us sinners was as a planter of flowers.

  The OCA is NOT planting flowers within their attitude here in Oregon. 
They are on a mission, and in that mission they want to  pull out what 
"they" see as weeds. The thing is, what they consider weeds, others see as 
flowers. So, a lot of pain, hurt and division is being felt here in Oregon.

  If the OCA took on the attitude of planting flowers like Jesus took, and
continued by mulching those flowers with love, the weeds, the real ones, 
would be smothered all on their own by the flowers, and the OCA would 
look very good. Instead, the very thing that they are fighting has 
organized like never before and in the future could be the OCA's worst 
nightmare. On top of that, our state, communities and even families have 
been divided in ways that are real ugly and destructive. 



	Love is the life force breathed
	into the Heart/Mind flower center
	of harmonious human relationships.
			Al Huang

	David Hatcher