The Garden They Are Going to Build On

The notices went up in April, cable tied to the fence at four points, and one of them came loose in May and nobody has fixed it and it flaps.

Nine years.

You started it because the site was full of the things a disused site fills with, and because somebody had to, and because at the time it did not occur to you that it was a project. It was just a Saturday, and then another one.

Now there are twenty-two beds. There is a shed that four people built badly and that has held through six winters. There is a woman in her eighties who has come every Tuesday for seven years and who does almost nothing except sit and be talked to, which turns out to be one of the most important jobs on the site.

And there is a notice on the fence saying the land is going for housing.

Nobody has done anything wrong. It is a council with a housing waiting list, and there are people on that list who need somewhere to live more than this town needs twenty-two beds of runner beans, and you know that and you have said it out loud to people who wanted you to be angrier.

Two of your neighbors have said the same thing to you since April. Stop putting the work in. Do not order more compost. There is no point going in on a Saturday for ground you are going to lose.

They are being kind. You went in on Saturday.

The psalm is about a portion, and portions are given

There is a couplet in Psalm 16 that uses the language of land allocation.

The LORD is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot. The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.Psalm 16:5-6

The image is a measuring line laid across ground to mark out somebody's share. David says his lines fell in pleasant places, and then he says the thing that carries the whole psalm: the LORD is the portion of mine inheritance.

The portion is not the field. The portion is God, and the field is where the line happened to fall.

That is the distinction this April needs. A person can lose the ground and not lose the portion, because the two were never the same thing, and David says so in a psalm about land.

You are not losing your portion in April, whatever happens to the site. I am not putting my own idea over you here. Scripture says the Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup, Psalm 16:5, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man stand at a fence and know the difference.

Your neighbors are not the enemy

Put this down before anything else: they are not against the garden.

The two who said it have both worked on that site. One of them built the shed badly. They are saying it because they have watched you go in every Saturday for nine years and they cannot bear to watch you go in for another eighteen months and then hand over the keys.

That is love with a spreadsheet attached, and the spreadsheet is not wrong.

We are not making them into opponents. There is a version of this page that hands you something to say at the next meeting, and it would feel satisfying and it would cost you the people who will still be your neighbors after the diggers.

You have not been asked to choose between hearing them and going in on Saturday. Scripture says in the multitude of counselors there is safety, Proverbs 11:14, and the Holy Spirit does not use a neighbor's worry as a test you pass by ignoring it.

The part where they are right

Let me be honest about their case, because it deserves it.

If the compost is money your household actually needs, do not order it. If the Saturdays are costing something at home, change the shape of them. And if part of what is keeping you going in is a refusal to accept that this ends, then that is grief working as fuel, and grief is a poor fuel and it burns a person down.

None of that is failure. Ending well is a real thing and it is not the same as giving up.

You are not required to break yourself over eighteen months of ground. Scripture says a bruised reed shall he not break, Isaiah 42:3, and the Holy Spirit is not standing at that gate on a Saturday holding a clipboard.

The part where I stand with you

And here is what I will not let stand.

There is no point working ground you are going to lose is a sentence with an assumption in it, and the assumption is that the point of the garden was the garden.

It was not, and nine years has proved it.

The point was a woman in her eighties on a Tuesday. The point was four men building a shed badly. The point was the boy who was excluded from school in the third year and who turned up because there was somewhere to be on a weekday morning.

None of that goes when the diggers come. All of it has already happened and cannot be undone by a planning decision.

You are not standing on the land, and you never were. Scripture says God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love, Hebrews 6:10, and the Holy Spirit has been on that site through nine years of Saturdays and does not file a work under the ground it stood on.