The Garden Master Gnome

Reminder from Mano:

Touch the leaf of a tree, bush, or flower and tell it you love it.

Barbara documented the following gnome encounter in May 2011. It sounds so natural and matter-of-fact, someone unfamiliar with her dedicated striving through the years might imagine that she has a secret channel into the elemental realm. In a way she does—a connection she has been moving toward and cultivating in one way or another for all of her 88 years. Even now, I never observe her taking her communications for granted, using them to her own advantage, or sounding self-satisfied about them. Rather she has developed many tools for clarifying and refining what she hears in her imagination, including use of the pendulum, artistic exercises that access the right brain, humor, cross checking, prayer, spiritual studies, spirit and human allies, and the patience to allow time for understanding and verification.

I was looking for something in Rudolf Steiner’s Festivals book the other day and found one of his very characteristic comments about this process. The content of his Whitsun lectures, he says, “is for the most part in the form of pictures, because pictures refuse to communicate themselves in the narrow, rationalistic way that is possible with concepts and ideas. People think that once a concept has been grasped they have got to the root of everything to which it is relevant. No such opinion is possible in the case of a picture, an imagination. A picture or an imagination works in a living way, like a living being itself. We may have come to know one aspect or another of a living person, but ever and again he will present new aspects to us. We shall not be satisfied, therefore, with definitions purporting to be comprehensive, but we shall endeavor to look for characteristics which contribute to the picture from different angles, giving us increasing knowledge of the person in question.”

Here is Barbara’s picture-story:
With my back to the greenhouse, I sit next to the lemon verbena tree and am embraced with her fragrance as we prepare for meditation with the garden angels and elementals. Andrea opens the seven directions; we chant to still time, space, and motion. She invites the garden angel, the angel of Amity, and all the spirit beings associated with this land to join us.

Within my inner eye I see an old gnome with a long beard. He stands about three feet high and looks at me directly. He is different—not like the others I have seen working in the garden. His clothes are dark; his grey beard reaches almost to his knees. I don’t know if he is wearing a hat or not.

I simply observe him, face to face. We don’t communicate until Andrea guides the meditation into the deep earth to connect with the goddess of the land. She asks the goddess to bless the garden, the plants, and the nature spirits. Immediately the gnome comes back into my vision, excited to receive the blessing of the goddess. “I am surprised,” I say to him. “I would think that she blesses you all of the time.” His reply forms in my mind: “Yes, she does bless us all of the time and that is like everyday blessings. But when a human asks her to bless the garden and the nature spirits, it enhances her blessing a thousand fold and it becomes a big celebration, Like a birthday or Christmas.”

 I realize that he looks similar to another gnome friend I relate with when I enter the faerie sanctuary under the amphitheater. I ask if he is Lov-o-lay. “No,” he says, “but I am of the same stature as that one.”

Our conversation continues. I tell him that I have had a garden in this part of the land for 25 years. He is well aware of this; he has been with me from the beginning he says. “I came when you and Jim started your garden and set the big intention for it to be a healing spot on the planet, a homeopathic dose, with humans and nature spirits working in conscious cooperation and harmony. Your prayer was that this healing would open love, respect, and harmonious interaction between human beings and nature beings. That kind of an intention rang throughout the halls within the earth.”

 He heard and answered the call because he wanted to work with us. He liked being with Jim when he would sit in the driveway and carefully pull the weeds from between the rocks. Jim never knew he was there, as I have not known of his presence before today, but he likes working with us and with our land.

He has taken it as his responsibility to keep the garden beautiful. Even though I do not work there as much as I used to, it still always looks good. This has surprised me and I call it a sweet garden. He is the one who brings the sweetness. Two years ago he brought the wild ferns into the north bed. This gives the garden a rich vibrant energy all summer long.

As I prepare to leave, the gnome tells me that he has shown himself to me as a very old one, with his long grey beard and subtle clothes, because he wishes me to recognize that he is one of the old ones, the wise ones. He is part of the group I refer to as the Master Gnomes that live within the land.

Now as I write this he stands in front of me to make me aware of another bit of information. My being able to see him, and his ability to communicate with me, is in response to a daily prayer I have been offering for two or three weeks. Each day I go outside and speak to Mother Earth, telling her I know it is hard for her to make this shift upon her axis with ease and grace. I realize that If she didn’t have to deal with humanity’s fear and discordant energy this shift would be simple for her. Since that is not true, she shudders as she makes her shift, with little earthquakes here and tornados there. I tell her I am sorry. I want to do my part to make it easier for her. I make her the promise that I will make a shift within my own consciousness to support her as she makes her shifts. This master garden gnome’s desire for me to see and hear him so clearly is evidence of the subtle shift I am making.