The Faithful Gardener, Book Review

@masterraalkivictorieux Master Ra’al Ki Victorieux

📚✨ Discover “The Faithful Gardener” by Clarissa Pinkola. A story that blossoms in the soul. #RecommendedReading #Literature #ClarissaPinkola 🌱💚 https://wp.me/p3JLEZ-8cx

I originally published the following article in 2006, under the pseudonym Iris México. It was published through “Lengua lengua”, an electronic newsletter and contemporary art blog from arT&+. Documenting previous publications is part of the digitalization of Atma Unum’s archive.

That which can never die

Just like the gypsies when the caravan sets off, although they leave a familiar place to head to an unknown one, no one is sad… “The Faithful Gardener” is a book that is announced on the cover as “a wise tale about that which can never die.” It was written by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, author of “Women Who Run with the Wolves,” and was published by Ediciones B for the label Javier Vergara Editor, Spain; the original title is “The Faithful Gardener: A Wise Tale About That Which Can Never Die.” Generally, those who write in English have greater international diffusion, and if published in Spanish, it’s ideal to have a Spanish publisher with international presence. This particular publication has distribution in Barcelona, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Madrid, Mexico City, Montevideo, Quito, and Santiago de Chile. The new seed is faithful. It takes root more strongly in the emptiest places. C.P. Estés Clarissa lives in the United States. The book begins with an epigraph from “C.P. ESTÉS” – is it her? Is she the author of the book, of the epigraph, and is her name the one of the foundation she directs?… In the book’s endpapers, she is presented with a conventional black-and-white photograph from the early 20th century, and it is added that she is a Jungian psychoanalyst, an award-winning poet, and a storyteller of Latin American tales. She is dedicated to teaching, and directs “C. P. Estés Guadalupe Foundation”, organization defending human rights, one of their missions is to transmit stories aimed at spiritual strengthening to conflictive enclaves around the world… So we are faced with a woman who believes that therapists and storytellers are healers of the spirit… and she is dedicated to this through educational, therapeutic, and editorial practices (audiobooks and printed books), etc. An interesting combination in which creation is accompanied by a supportive structure ranging from the clinical to globalized audiobooks that can be purchased by mail.

Now, the story: Clarissa’s uncle, an elderly farmer who survived World War II, and also, the story of how the tales were created… Clarissa shares that, when she was a child, the elders preserved the tradition of “story-making”, encouraging the young to weave narratives, they would say: “Come on, we want to see how you exercise the muscle of stories.” In one of her childhood stories, Clari recounts: “Ah, stories came to the world because God felt lonely.” And so she continues in a Genesis-like manner in which the creation of nature, animals, and man parallels the creation of the stories that portray them and those who tell them with emotion. After this introduction, we return to the grandfather, who is of course a natural storyteller; his name is Zovár. It is Zovár who “sows” tales or a certain ideology through his words: “The Nazis and their collaborators were not from Germany. Cowards are from no country. Those demons came from hell.” Thus, Zovár tells us where Eden is, claiming it is in this world; the whole earth is Eden, it is true that in many places it is buried and forgotten, worn out, exhausted, or out of use, yet beneath it remains Eden. However, we cannot restore life to it with shovels; no matter how big the garden, it has to be done with soft pats on the earth, taking handfuls, being kind and moderate, with consideration, with serenity. In the serenity and love of a good gardener, is where the author believes lies the secret of our land, our food, our existence, of ourselves, who are also a garden that wishes to be treated in that way; we respond to what happens to the earth, although sometimes we forget it…

Childhood Clarissa is also who “sows” her vision of the world, recounting that when she finally met her uncle in America, a war survivor, he simply embraced her and said: “A… live… girl…” and she returned the hug and understood what his eyes expressed; it was a gaze she had seen before, “when I looked into the eyes of horses that had survived a sudden and voracious fire in the barn.” Later, while living with Zovár, Clari describes him as: “his life had been burned down to the foundations, and despite everything, he remained kind to children and loving to animals and still believed that the earth was a living being, with its own hopes, needs, and dreams.”

The tragedy was the arrival of bulldozers that “annexed” the land of the family to the state; Zovár shouted at them, shaking his fist: “You know as little about the garden of God as a chicken knows the alphabet!”, and he ended up crying helplessly and desperately when the workers took him away to his house. The road was built, and the fields were left destroyed. The uncle went with two shovels to dig a trench along the field, and at night he set it ablaze… “Because the earth is patient, it receives the seed, the weeds, the tree, the flower; it welcomes the rain, the grain, the fire. It allows and favors entry. It is the perfect host.” (…) “You make it go through fire in order to prepare it for its new life. This is the part that God does not do alone. God asks for collaboration. It depends on us to lend a hand to what God has already begun. No one likes this kind of fire, this type of blaze. We want the field to remain what it has always been, in all its singular beauty, just as we want life to continue being what it has always been. But the fire comes. Despite our fear, it appears anyway; sometimes by chance, sometimes intentionally, sometimes for reasons that no one can comprehend… reasons that are only God’s business.”

And we are all guests of the earth… And although we believe we are following the right map… God suddenly decides to lift the path and place it and us with it in another place.

Zovár rested after the fire and told a story to Clarissa, about “That which can never die.” A young fir lived in the forest, surrounded by taller trees. Each winter, families cut several down and took them away, with joy, sledges, and children’s laughter. The fir wanted to be taken one day to that wonderful place it knew was called home… There, they were caressed, decorated, illuminated, revered. Years passed, and no one chose him, until he grew, and one day, when he was green, lush, and strong, he experienced the deepest pain, he was cut down, and he remembered that now he was going to the place he desired to see with all his soul. He was decorated and much more; joyful, beautiful, happy… Until the ornaments were torn from him, he was mistreated and left in the attic, only to be chopped with an axe and turned into firewood… and although at first, he resisted, he managed to understand that this was his joyful mission: to give warmth… And his ashes were scattered on the earth in spring, mixing with the rain, and green shoots emerged, and the fir was happy to be useful once again. To conclude, Zovár emphasized: “Go weep in the fields because there your tears will do good for both you and the earth.” They cried with more stories and declared that land baptized… Over time, a small grove and an understory grew, home to cardinals, jays, butterflies…

Over the years, Zovár let a small parcel of Eden grow within him, and when he was ready to leave, he collapsed like a great tree, and his existence was extended through seasons… until one night he was finally free. Clarissa tells us that what can never die is “the faithful strength that is born within us, which is greater than us, that draws the new seed to the open, damaged, and barren places in such a way that it can take root in us again. This strength, in its insistence, in its loyalty to us, in its love for us, in its action that is almost always mysterious, is much larger, much more majestic, and much more ancient than any other force that has ever been known.”

The epilogue of the book is where Clarissa tells us about the ritual she performed when she decided to write “The Faithful Gardener”: cultivating a forest, a grove in the small garden of her brick bungalow… she burned the earth on a windless day, shed enough tears, waited with faith and love… and surprisingly, as if the earth remembered its oldest patterns, in three years she saw maples, laurels, ashes, clovers, mint, garlic, strawberries grow… woodpeckers, sparrows, and butterflies had arrived, ladybugs, crickets that sound like bells… Through that urban forest, Clarissa contemplates her family of refugees, love, wisdom, life, knowledge, “the absolute certainty that life repeats and renews itself no matter how many times it is stabbed, stripped of everything, thrown to the ground, harmed and ridiculed, despised and looked down upon, tortured or left defenseless.” “There is something that remains waiting for us to clear the way, something that is by our side, something that loves and waits for us to prepare the right ground so it can manifest its presence in all its fullness. (…) As long as we carefully tend to this force, what seemed dead will no longer be, what seemed lost will cease to be, what some consider impossible will clearly be possible, and any fallow ground will simply be resting… resting and waiting for the blessed seed to be fortuitously carried by the wind. And it will be.”

Original Publication:

Iris Mexico. (February 17, 2006) That which can never die. Lengua lengua, electronic newsletter and blog on contemporary art. arT&+

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