(Quick instructions on how to transform yourself into a garden)
Smiling, the gardener pulled the last vegetable from the black earth. Like a gold clad trophy, the onion glistened in the rays of the morning sun. He laid it gently with its companions in a wicker basket that was lying near the dirt bed. He laughed.
The garden that he and his brother had planted in the early spring had taken quite a while to mature. From tilling the weed-strewn earth, to planting the delicate seedlings, to keeping the beds free of weeds, the garden was most surely an arduous place, a long road to a kind of Eden.
The emerald-green plants were still small, their leaves still petite, and their roots still shallow. As if by a moving wind, the entire garden rippled with impatience and anticipation. The tiny shoots of sweet corn wanted, so badly, to bear their silk-bound, yellow treasures that were sure to come in the fall. Anchored in their deep, earthen beds, the potatoes were even more anxious than there neighboring corn. They could barely wait for the coming of their subterranean jewels, their buried pearls. But they did wait, they did not bolt or shrivel with consumption.
From plant to plant, bed-to-bed, patience and moderation rose like soft strings on the air. No root drank more than its fill and when they did drink, it was in the pre-dawn light and under night's nocturnal cover. In the heat of the blazing sun and the chill of the icy moon, through the strongest of tempests and under the most silent skies, the garden remains the epitome of endurance and forbearance. It is like the quintessential fasting person in the sacred month of Ramadan.
Walking into my small country garden, I thought of this concept. When Ramadan comes around the corner, we Muslims should really try to transform our internal environments into gardens. Like the patient garden plants mentioned earlier, we believers, we little fasting persons, should be able to spread our leaves and bend in the worshipping breeze that flows forth from the surrounding valleys of faith.
In the grace of this month, mornings and evenings should be the time our mouths open to the nourishing dew and the earth's subtle minerals. When morning breathes, and as the sun ascends to its hot zenith, our faithful endurance should shine out clearest, and our thorns should be withheld, protecting the hands and hearts around us.
As soon as dawn's graceful overture plays, and food and drink arc put away, we should assume that we are little gardens, just waiting to collect the jewels of faith like dewdrops from our hearts watering the harvest of our souls. Even when Ramadan rolls out of growing season and well into wintry days, our hearts can still be greenhouses full of plump, golden deeds that we can cherish for a seemingly far off day, that is oh so near—near, God willing, to the gates of far green Garden.