THIS GARDEN, LIVING AND DYING

Seeds germinate. Roots push into the muck. They draw sustenance from this muck, and push that up and into stalks and buds. Here, in this garden, my family blossoms. My love blossoms. My beloved blossoms. My life is shaped. And here, too, all of it withers, dies.

Rev. Hans Peter Meyer

15 Apr 2026 — 5 min read

Apprenticeship to Love: April 15, 2026

TODAY'S MEDITATION

Let me continue with the foolishness of April's muddy, root-nourishing wisdom: If I am not ready to die, perhaps I am not yet ready to love…

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Last night I watched a film* about death and dying and living with all of that.

This morning I had an inkling about the re-enchantment of my life, our lives, this garden of love. And how death makes things sacred.

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Looking at love, life, the world through the lens of polarity is a yogic tool. A way to make sense of what often appears beyond sensible.

I'm a fan of science and science-based approaches.

I'm also a fan of mystery and the darkness beyond our capacities to measure and understand. This is a frightening place, most of the time, for me, in this life. It's also the place where great beauty and wonder is born.

It's an axiom of the yogic tool of polarity that what we call the "masculine" relates to and reveals the "feminine" by creating and holding awareness. That part of ourselves that stands in this masculine polarity affords a safe space for the feminine to unfold. In ourselves, in the world around us. Standing in still and profound awareness the feminine shows Her beauty. Her gifts.

It's this standing in awareness, I'm learning, is how I experience myself as sacred. It's how I experience those around me, and the world around me, as sacred. Enchanted.

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This morning I was resisting the call to the practices that enable me to hold the holy, enchanted space I'm discovering to be so important. Even when I understand how important it is to me, it's not unusual for me to resist to the call. The bed is warm. I'm tired.

But I was being pestered by the early morning thoughts and worries that can afflict me. I knew that sleep would not come peacefully.

So I got up. Pulled on some clothes, and began the process of moving my body, stretching my body, aligning my body. Within moments of beginning I could feel myself opening.

I need these early morning moments when closing is most attractive. As is so often the case, by the time I am ready to sit and breathe and chant and meditate, something has stirred. Something unknown and unbidden has come up from the deep, dark, muddy roots of my being. I am –finally– still enough to witness, and appreciate.

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Holding space begins with holding myself.

I make sense of the world and my experience in it when I look first to myself to create and hold the safe places for the always-changing, always-more (the feminine polarity) to open. I open myself to the dark unknown and She emerges with gifts unimaginable. I consider this to be holy work, to become still and aware and receptive. It's my sacred masculine calling.

It's the path I walk and live, how I express and live my art as a husband. It's how I tend this always-changing garden that is this life and the love I experience.

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The garden of my life does what gardens do. Seeds germinate. Roots push into the muck. They draw sustenance from this muck, and push that up and into stalks and buds. Here, in this garden, my family blossoms. My love blossoms. My beloved blossoms. My life is shaped. And here, too, all of it withers, dies.

My garden survives me, in its own way. My gift and bequeathment is the space I hold for it while I breathe. To the extent that I've created and held the structure for the cycle of germinating, rooting, flowering, and dying, to that extent the feminine in my life –my garden– continues to nourish me. This is the strange and sacred magic of my service.

But —and this is what the darkness asked of me this morning— what if this masculine polarity, my capacity to create and hold structure, is itself held by an ocean of love that flows through and in and around all of us?

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I had friends for dinner recently. My wise friend, he who has been across the threshold of death's door a couple of times now, and his wife. I'd made one of their favourite meals. Afterwards we watched the film about death and dying and living with it all.*

It was now my third time listening to and watching this meditation on death & life.

As the film finished we sat for a few moments, letting things settle, sink, become part of the muck at our roots.

That is how I see it now.

From those roots my friend drew a story, something never before told, he said. It was, in my listening, about sustaining tenderness to the world, in a culture that has little regard for tenderness and its strange and peculiar and difficult gifts.

When he finished, more silence. More for the roots to draw on.

Later, when it was just he and me, his wife of the room, he referenced the one I love. Words to the effect of, She knows this strange and peculiar and difficult place from which gifts come. I nodded. It was what I'd been thinking as he told his story.

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You told me, I said to her this morning, not so long ago, that there are many others, but you see me, you hear me, you know me. That was a beautiful thing to hear. And especially so, I continued, because I know it was not always so.

Two people have credit for any current knowing I may have, I said. You, with your impatience for my insensitivity and, at the same time, your patience as I become more sensitive. The other person is my wise friend, who has —since our beginning— told my insensitive ears that you are a rare gift. Because he has lived with the darkness and with the mystery he knows in you a kindred tender-to-the-world spirit.

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Watching the film I was reminded of how much I long for your companionship, my beloved. It is a sweet thing, to feel how deeply I yearn to walk with you, sit with you, to hear your voice.

I am so grateful for this, for you, for what & who & how I live, because of you.

...

These words are offered not for replying to. They are offered as a belated acknowledgement.

I know her as perhaps few others do. And, knowing her and loving her, this is a wonderful thing. Perhaps the most beautiful thing in this life I've been blessed to live.

It is for this beauty that I practice. It's for this blessing that I develop my art of husbandry. I am learning to have reverence for the muck and the dark and the mystery. Only with this wonder and awe am I aware of how, in Her time and in Her way, She blesses my life.