Imagine what that could mean in your life. Hear the song of the turtledove, the ripple of the brook and the singing trees and know that you are part of the hope of creation awakening. Berry s sense of awe and poetic license in nature echoes my own sentiments. Berry calls us into the garden. Yet it is here, in the garden, where he writes of both living and dying.
Death is as central to the life of the garden as is the new growth of spring.
This call, this ancient pull to begin anew in the springtime, I have been invoking today begins after death. I am not saying that death is good and we should accept willingly the untimely deaths of our loved ones. What I am saying is that death and grieving are present in the garden. They must be present here. Without it, certain aspects of our soul and the soil cannot be replenished and the cycle of the seasons of our lives cannot begin anew.