“Salvation is less about getting into heaven and more about getting heaven into you.”

—John Mark Comer

A Christian minister in a Zen Garden?

God continues to surprise me. Who knew I could find hope in a Japanese tea garden? All the curious and creative ways God speaks to me invites a spiritual life that feels more like an adventure. Richard Rohr wrote, “the purest form of spirituality is to find God in what is right in front of you.” In this case, God joins me weekly at the Blevins Japanese Garden one mile from my house in Nashville, TN. Many Friday afternoons, the sacred realm of a Zen Garden becomes my therapy, church, and creative laboratory. This secret haven provides me much needed peace in a chaotic season of my life. Exhausted from white-knuckling my life, the Zen Garden offers me a sanctuary to slip away, to just be quiet. Tranquility, as I discovered, is a hope-regenerator. Why wait for heaven, when you can experience glimmers of its lush peace sitting crossed-legged under a Japanese pavilion taking in an otherworldly view.

This special garden awakens one to the Japanese spiritual and aesthetic concept of “wabi.” Beauty and meaning in life are revealed in its simplicity, tranquility and kindly accepted imperfection. Welcome to a spirituality of grace. I was reminded of the advice of the filmmaker, David Lynch, “Just slow things down and it becomes more beautiful.” Slow and still has become a necessary new ritual. Zen wisdom instructs: “Look carefully for what is right under your feet.” I have a Zen Garden to thank for helping me peel away life’s present worries to reveal again a spirit known by its joy.

Serendipitously, at about the same time, while spring cleaning my closet, I rediscovered a t-shirt my sister made for me during my son’s cancer threat. The words, “I Am HOPE,” are emblazoned on the front. It is a true statement, but sometimes we all need help rediscovering it within us. Holding the beautiful and the juxtaposed hard in this human experience will always be a challenge. But hope is always there. Meister Eckhart, the 14^th century Christian mystic wrote about a sanctuary of tranquility inside us that the world cannot touch or wound. We just have to find ways to visit that holy, protected place.

The Japanese are to be admired for their intentionality to live quietly and reverently. They perceive the present world as a sacred place where the eternal can regularly peek through. This is evidenced by the love put into creating these precious, little Edens on earth.

The poet Peter Courtney Quennell once referred to “a finger’s length above reality.” That is the purpose of a Japanese garden. It draws one away from the chaotic to hear one’s heart again, maybe experience a bit of otherworldliness. It begins the moment one crosses the threshold, each step taken slowly, not rushed. Next, one enters a lovely bamboo forest, immediately feeling embraced—mothered. One is encouraged to lay down one’s burdens and journey forward with a new lightness of being. Every stage of the garden experience pulls one farther away from the chaotic world. Stepping inside the Japanese pavilion, one imagines this is what heaven will be like.

I take my seat on the lower pavilion deck then walk the path that winds through the evergreens and rock formations. This work of art is surprisingly intimate, protected by a castle wall in the Japanese style, and screened by geometrical trees from Japan, China, and native Tennessee. Each rock, tree, bush, and sculpture is hand-picked by the artist to relay a sacred purpose, mirroring how God orders holy creation, and our unique lives. There are darkish pine trees pruned to conjure the wind blowing through them, pushing me to ponder new possibilities in my life.

I was introduced to the garden in winter, its bare austerity welcomed vulnerability and reflection. One Friday, the snow was melting off the roof onto the stones below (drip-drop, drip-drop) for over an hour. Channeling my inner monk, briefly peace became mine. Then spring arrived, and with it a child-like delight for the return of life in the blooming azaleas, iridescent pink camelias, greener than green moss, and perfumed cherry blossoms.

A Zen Garden embodies the Japanese cultural and spiritual worldview that the world should be revered as a holy place with intimations of the eternal. The imperfect beauty of the garden encourages one to be less hard on oneself and more receptive to mercy. The gardener that oversees this Zen sanctuary shared that the six stone lanterns placed throughout the garden were meant to light one’s “spiritual” path moving one closer to the sublime and holy. I do believe God’s intent is transformation; drawing out the divine beneath the dust.

Peace is possible when one steps away from the hubbub, listening for the still, small voice of God again whispering within. After 9/11, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, wrote a little book, Writing in the Dust, suggesting that healing was possible when we allow for “breathing spaces” in our everyday lives—to let go and just be. The Zen priest Shunmyo Masuno says lives are transformed when we “reduce, let go, leave behind.” Beautiful instruction to make more room for hope.

Go find your heaven on earth. A place that encourages a softening of your rough edges, a release of your fears, and invites you to breathe deep and free, your hope restored.

***Enjoy CeCe Winans new song!***