Laura Paquette - Ecology of Eden Ch 17 & 18

 The Cloister and the Plow


The most important thing about this chapter that stuck out to me was how gardens were viewed by monks. Eisenberg mentions that gardens were arranged so that they would prefigure heaven. To monks, they served the purpose of setting ideals and were viewed as important as scribes. Most shockingly, they viewed gardens as a way to inwardly look toward areas that resembled heaven rather than outward methods that pushed toward temptations such as pride.

I had never seen gardens as a way to resemble heaven or any "God-like" location. Now that I think of it, man's first dwelling place, according to the Judeo-Christian belief, was in the Garden of Eden. Humans, however, didn't obey the rules said by God and so they were punished and forced to leave because of their disobedience. Across the world in Asia, the common belief among Japanese was that they should have beautiful gardens, because those with beautiful gardens would merit the visit of a Shinto god, with the goal being that if your garden was beautiful enough, it would host, traveling, gods. It is obvious that across the world, gardens are seen as godly or heavenly. Why is this, though? Why do we see the ultimate perfection in what we cannot control? Is it because God or gods our out of our control? Why do we relate these natural things to supernatural beings, things outside of our understanding?

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