Finding God in the Garden
 Balfour Brickner
 (Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
 2003 Little, Brown & Co.
 ISBN: 0316738662

Backyard Reflections on Life, Love, and Compost. Of course I'm going to be drawn to a book that invites me to find spirituality as I labor in my little patch of Eden, & Rabbi Brickner's weaving of his memories of starting to garden at a relatively late age, of both his successes & his failures, & his musings of both Judaic & Christian philosophies & faith are fertilizers for the meditation of the soul. He writes both playfully & seriously about what he thinks the meaning of soul & prayer are, of what composting can teach us about death, & of miracles, fertilizers & sacred human activities, of sitting & thinking Big Thoughts, of healing through patience & understanding.

In the autumn of his life, Rabbi Brickner writes about his decades as an interpreter of things Biblical & religious & as a newcomer to gardening both in the micro- & macrocosmic sense. In his Finding God in the Garden he speaks to everyone who digs in this earth of Eden, who has ever wondered what that First Garden & its First Gardeners might have been like.

Balfour Brickner explains where the Garden of Eden first appeared, where on Earth it might have been & what is written about it in the Bible (as well as some clues about who wrote that holy tome). Here also he ponders on what actually happened between God & Adam & Eve, what the first “sin” really was, & how “free will” separates us from all other living creatures.

From how sex became sinful & how it never was meant to be; of how weeds are the manifestations of unwanted evils [Ha!] & how we humans do differ from our animal relatives. Of how to think about God within the context of our lives as well as how to think of the land as a primal learning place.

Easily accessible, charmingly written, Rabbi Brickner has poured into this gentle & fascinating book, all the wisdom he learnt from his father, from his studies, from his time as an eminent spiritual guide & offers us bouquet after bouquet of joyous thoughts as well as profoundly healing posies.

During a recent unexpected stay in our local hospital I had Finding God in the Garden with me. In between the nurses' ministrations & the doctor conferences, I would stare out of the window at the pathetic patch of badly mown & unraked grass & the bedraggled gardening attempts, & ponder on the passages I'd just read from the thoughts of this wise & humorous rabbi.

Listening to the way rabbis discuss, explain & teach is a familiar encounter for me. Quite, quite different from any other “professional religionists” (those are the good rabbi's words) I have met, other than the Dalai Lama. At the risk of sounding sexist I have to say that, for men, both these special thinkers are superb in their cogency & insights.

Finding God in the Garden is one of those books you will read at every phase of your life & in each season of your garden. It begs to accompany you with your favorite beverage, when your work for the day is done, the shadows are falling & your little bit of Eden is calling.
(08/31/03)

Rebecca