Dancing in the Garden

Dancing in the Garden

Grandmother put down the Bible, took off her glasses and rubbed her deep blue eyes. “What a tragic day that must have been for them, having to move out of the garden.” She sighed and hugged the little girl in her lap. “But I guess none of us could have done any better in the same situation, could we?”

The little girl looked up, “If I were in the garden, I wouldn’t have eaten that apple Grandma, I promise.”

Grandma said, “Yeah, maybe so, but you would have done some fence-dancing, believe me.”

“What’s fence dancing?” The girl asked, getting down from the lap and sitting on the floor looking up. Grandmother grinned and settled into her chair. The girl smiled knowing she was going to get another story before bed.

“Let me tell you a story,” she began. “A long time ago, almost before there was time,” She winked, “a little girl very much like you said exactly the same thing. Only instead of hearing a story from her crazy old grandmother, a wonderful and frightening thing happened.”

The girl’s eyes did not blink. You could see the whites of her eyes in the night.

“Now I’ve got you!” Grandma thought, and continued.

“This girl lived in a small town. There wasn’t much to do really; compared to the towns we live in today. No movies, no McDonald’s. Parks consisted of trees, and streams and fields of grass. Kids had to make up their own things to do. And this little girl was particularly good at making up things to do. Mostly, she made up stories in her head and acted them out. She could be so many people and go so many places in her mind that she would live in her imaginary worlds for hours. She imagined she was a princess picking roses for a banquet she was giving. Sometimes she was a great scientist trying to discover a cure for a terrible disease that threatened the lives of the entire town. Her favorite was when she was an animal doctor, fixing the broken legs of horses and watching baby kittens be born.

Outside the town was a gardener living in a lovely singing cottage. The girl called it the singing cottage because so many birds perched there that it seemed as if the cottage itself was chirping and peeping, and singing. Around his home was a beautiful garden with flowers, vegetables and fruit trees.

When the girl first discovered the garden, she sneaked in to play her games because the closer she was to the garden, the more real her stories became. She came back day after day until one day she met the gardener face to face. She was playing with a stick, sword fighting with an imaginary enemy when he walked up and smiled at her with the most peculiar grin.

“Not trying to hurt my friend there, I trust,” he said.

The girl smiled at his laughing eyes. He turned toward the imaginary swordsman, took off his muddy hat and bowed. She liked him immediately. His eyes were a potpourri of green—the colors of the leaves, grass and flower petals mixing together and reflecting back at her.

“I’m sorry to trespass," the girl said. "But your garden seems to make things alive. I like playing here.”

The Gardener turned away and walked a few steps, twirling his cap in his hands as if in thought. “You may play in my garden. It is a wonderful place to pretend and to grow,” He said decisively. “But there is one very important rule you must follow. If it is broken, you cannot play in the garden any more.”

“What is it?” the girl asked. And he told her the story of the Great Garden of long ago.

"I've heard that story before," the girl said, "I would never do that."

The Gardener took her hand, and together they walked over to a single tree in the center of a perfectly circular fence. “What is the fence for?” she asked, “You have a fence around the whole garden. Why do you need another one around this tree? Certainly it is safe from anything that would harm it.”

The Gardener said, “It is not to protect the tree, but to protect you and me. Tradition says that the Great Garden was at or near this spot, and that seeds from the Original Tree fell here and planted themselves in the ground. All the other trees of this kind have died, but this tree remains alive. It’s too dangerous to even go near the tree because the temptation is too great. You can play in the whole garden, but you may not go inside the fence.”

The little girl agreed to stay away from the tree, even as she noticed that it was the most beautiful tree in the garden. Every tree wore springtime flowers, but the colors of the fenced tree splashed the brightest shades of pink and yellow and purple against the blue of the sky.

At first she played as far from the tree as she could, but the colors drew her closer to the fence each day. She longed to feel a petal against her face. Was it as soft as velvet? Which sweet smell in the wind was coming from those flowers? As the air warmed day after day, the flowers turned to fruit and the branches weighed heavy toward the fence. She thought, “Oh, how I wish there wasn’t that rule!”

Every day, she played her games closer and closer to the tree. Then, the tree became the main character in her imaginative dramas. One day, she was the princess performing a dance for the kingdom. The first time she performed the dance, all the subjects loved the dance, but not everyone could see her. So, she decided to dance on the fence that stood around the tree. The dance was beautiful; the music soared; she jumped, turned and ended the dance with a beautiful pose. The whole kingdom cheered, and she bowed, but when she did, she lost her balance and began to wobble. She leaned forward, pulled back, then sideways. She was about to fall when she reached out and grabbed one of the heavy branches to steady her from falling.

As several pieces of fruit fell to the ground and the girl’s body made a sick thud on the ground, the Gardener walked up, His shoulders lowered and his head drooped. “I thought this might happen.”

He came over to the fence and leaned on it. He patted it several times “Fences. Rules. When they’re around, we feel trapped. But it is when we have them that we are actually free."

She got up slowly and walked over to the Gardener and looked into his sad green eyes. She ducked under the fence and stood next to him looking down. She felt the wood of the fence on her fingertips.

“It’s like this for everyone. We start out being afraid of what we can’t do, but as we get used to it, it becomes less scary. Our hearts stop pounding and it doesn’t seem so bad anymore. Then we get closer, until one day, we either give in, like I did; or we trip up like you and fall into the trap. It’s always better to play away from the fence because one day, we’ll want to dance on it.”

“You see, sometimes we figure out how to obey a rule, but we inch as close as possible to the deed. We find a loophole. We stretch the rule as far as we can without breaking it, but we break God’s heart in the process. What God wants is our heart obedience. He wants us to obey Him because we love Him.”

Tears dripped silently off the end of the girl’s nose. “I guess I have to say goodbye to you and the Garden,” she cried, trying not to sound like a baby. “I am so sorry.”

“You will have to say goodbye to the Garden,” he said gently, “But you will not have to say goodbye to me,” He tucked her under his arm, “You come to the garden fence whenever you want, and I will come out to meet you. I love you, little one.”

“Did the little girl ever get to go back into the Garden?” the girl said through a yawn.

“Well, that’s a story for another time, but I will tell you this. She came back every day to meet the Gardener at the fence, and they remained great friends. I could tell you about all the mysteries he told her or about the imaginary stories she shared with him, but I think that’s enough for tonight,” Grandma hugged the girl who had already fallen asleep.