Confession: I love to get dirty.

I love to garden.


In fact, right now I’m sitting on my pretty font porch at my cute little red-tile café table while my fountain bubbles merrily and splashes the purple and pink rhododendrons blooming riotously amongst the ‘fairy garden’ of blue snapdragons, red columbine and green hostas. It’s my slice paradise: colorful, fragrant and all created by my own grubby hands.


I know. Not very ‘Confession’ worthy, huh? Me admitting that my hobby is gardening probably evokes images of rubber shoes and funny straw hats. Both of which I do wear while gardening…but I also wear a string bikini. That way I can multi-task; my roses get pruned and my shoulders get a lovely tan. Plus, I’m pretty sure my neighbor enjoys the view of me bent over to pull weeds in a hot pink, teeny-tiny string bikini.


Trust me, I make gardening sexy. Each month, I receive several magazines: People (keeps me updated on the latest celebrity addicts, romances and fashions), Cosmo (keeps updated on the latest sex positions), Victoria’s Secret (keeps me updated on the best ways to display my tits and ass) and Sunset (keeps me updated on how to fight aphids and when it’s best to prune my Japanese maple). When I’m very lucky, I can combine all of this knowledge. Seriously. Last Friday night, I slid into my new lacy thong from VS, put on a sexy one-shouldered top (all the starlets in People claim shoulders are the new sexy) and lured my husband outside where we tried out a few new Karma Sutra moves (I AM a Cosmo girl!) under the trellis of honeysuckle.


Historically, gardening is very sinful. The pagans—those crazy sex-fiends-- celebrated the earth with depraved harvest festivals, the ‘birds and the bees’ are so randy we use them to explain sex to our children and a ‘may pole’ involved virgins bedecking themselves in flowers—and not much else—to gleefully wrap ribbons around a huge phallic symbol. Added to all of that, it was IN the Garden that Eve was so darn naughty!


Yesterday, I apparently got so dirty in my rose beds that the Universe delivered a missionary to my doorstep to try to save my tight little sinning ass from eternal damnation.


I was blissfully down on all fours, attacking the stupid grass that insists upon growing in my roses and not in the lawn, when I heard the staccato ‘click click click’ of low-heeled pumps marching up my driveway. When I looked over my shoulder, a woman who could only be addressed as ‘Ma’am’ was staring at me over my white picket fence, her mouth pinched so tightly her parentheses wrinkles rivaled the Grand Canyon.


Now, here’s a secret. My daddy is a missionary’s kid. Thus, I am generally fairly kind to these fanatic folk. In fact, I think my house is on every denomination’s map. Latter Day Saints in their white short-sleeved shirts, ‘non-denominational’ big churches with their hip, guitar-playing kids, Lutherans (which I kinda sorta am) with their tasteful pant suits…they all visit me. I offer them lemonade or sweet tea, let them use the bathroom and listen politely for at least ten minutes.


At least, that’s the reason I choose to believe they all knock on my door. Probably it has more to do with fact that on Sunday mornings I prefer to worship my husband’s rockin’ body, the fattening goodness of donuts and the glorious scent of fresh-turned soil while my babies giggle and roll in the soft green grass with their puppy. To me, this is God, the Goddess, Allah, Buddha and all that is Peace and Good and Love in this world.


Stuart maintains that they all visit here because he’s a jackass. This is also possible. I know for a fact that he signs John up with every single religious group. As in, the poor sweet Mormon missionaries come to our house, Stuart claims he is already very devout (he WAS a Lutheran alter boy back in the day), but his buddy John down the street has been asking to be saved. Their faces alight with joy and the missionaries hustle off to John’s house.


John retaliates by using Stuart’s name and address to call all of those ‘change your life’ 800 numbers that run on Friday and Saturday night commercials, inviting all of us sinners to remember that there is more to life—or more accurately, the after life--than loud club music and ice-cold martinis.


Whatever the reason, my house is a regular pit-stop on the missionaries’ road to salvation.


Today, it was the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Witness ‘Ma’am’ stared down at me.  I was on my knees at the time, a humble position I, contrary to my blatantly-sinning demenor, assume often.  I get down to tie my girls' shoes, to examine my geraniums for leaf-curl, to worship my husband....

I think she was trying to read my tattoo, which was nicely displayed just above my barely-covered butt. This is when I knew she wasn't Catholic or Lutheran.  If she were, she would have been equipped to translate the Latin phrase.  Of course, were she Cathloic she’d then have to do a major penance…I’m thinking at least 500 “Hail Mary’s” for viewing such blasphemy!


Abandoning her perusal of my inked ass, Ma'am demanded, “Have you found God, Miss?”

Her voice was chilly and sharp. In fact, she was so dammed bitchy I swear by all that is holy that the petals dropped right off of my Desert Peace rose. Now, normally I would respond politely in some way, but I love that rose. Stuart planted it the day Jennifer was born. It has grown as she has, sweetly entwining around the front fence and curling around the naughty little stone gargoyle that protects my gate from evil spirits. Every year of Jennifer’s life, this rose has gifted me with beautiful blooms that scent my front walkway all summer long. And now this…this Ma’am-ish creature with her nylons and black skirt and holier-than-thou attitude was causing this symbol of my youngest child’s innocence to whither and die!


I was tempted to pick up my so-tacky-it’s-cool garden gnome and bash her over the head with it. Actually, having a garden gnome is a great home-protection idea: John recently responded to a call for a guy who beat a home-intruder senseless with his army of wheelbarrow-and-bucket-wielding concrete garden gnomes. I hear the pointy little hats did especially unfortunate damage to the hapless robber’s face.


However, being the non-violent, peace-loving, daughter-of-a-flower-child earth mother that I am, I responded much more appropriately.

 “I wasn’t aware it was my job to look for him.”

(*plagiarism note: this is NOT my line. I stole it from John, who is truly a God…of sarcasm)

This pissed Ma’am off. She placed her talons…I mean fat, wrinkly, in-serious-need-of-a-manicure hands...on my fence and ‘humphed’ at me. This pissed me off. I’m a non-violent person (mainly because I’m too small and smart to go picking fights I know I can’t win), but ‘humphs’ will not be tolerated in my garden.


Nature and I retaliated.


I glared at her. My Peace rose pricked her with thorns. My gargoyle stuck his tongue out at her (Ok, ok, it always has its tongue sticking sassily out, but Ma’am was definitely an evil presence to be repelled!) and Marshmellow, my silly little white fluffy dog, growled as if she were actually a huge, attack-trained K9.


“Miss, the Lord is no joking matter!”


This made me giggle. I was reminded of the scene in Arthur Miller’s satirical play, The Crucible, when Abigail claims that witches made her laugh in church. I myself have often laughed in church (sorry, but I just find the robes and the arrogance and the horrible, toneless white-people singing funny).


Actually, I think Ma’am thought I was a witch. As I giggled, the little mama starling who has built her nest in my hanging petunia porch pots for 3 years in a row dive-bombed Ma’am’s helmet-haired head. This pissed off the blue jays who nest in my flowering plumb tree and they raised a racket as only pissed-off jay-birds can. All of this set Marshmellow to barking (she has an on-going feud with the blue-jays...which began when she started eating their young. We’re quite the house-full of evil-doers, aren’t we?).


Waving one arm frantically about her head, Ma’am thrust a brightly-printed flyer--which had the 5 steps to ‘finding’ God printed helpfully upon it—at me and fled down the street. My laughter and the cacophony of my nature-bound familiars followed her.


I know, I know, all of this is blasphemous. Pastor Bob, God rest his soul, is probably despairing of me.


Actually, I’m pretty sure Pastor Bob is up there in Heaven with Sweet Little Baby Jesus, laughing his holy ass off right along with me.


It was Pastor Bob who gave me the most Holy and True answer about God I’ve ever heard. I was deeply troubled while taking my Confirmation classes (note to all missionaries: I actually am baptized and confirmed.) I couldn’t understand why everything about the Bible and God and Church was always so serious and sad and why I had to look down at prayer when I though Heaven was up.  I also thought God wore pink silk pajamas, but that’s Amy’s fault—she whispered this vivid description to me at 5th grade church camp and the visual  stuck.


Pastor Bob didn’t scold me for my inquiry. Pastor Bob was cool. So cool, he always kept his Super Bowl Sunday sermon super-short so we could all get home and watch the Game (Pastor Bob was a 49ers fan…and the years he was alive, the Niners had Joe Montana and Steve Young…proof of God if ever there was some!).


Anyway, the good Pastor smiled at me and told me that God loved happiness and silliness and that I could look up when I prayed if I wanted to and that I should laugh as often as I liked because the true Word of God, the true Workings of God happened outside the church doors, not within.


I haven’t been back to church since Pastor Bob’s funeral. Instead, I worship my own beliefs in the ways he taught me…out here in my lush garden with my flowers and creatures and children and family and warm sun, cool rain and generously-giving Earth.


Here, outside the stuffy walls of Man’s fear and ignorance and hate.


Out here, in the Garden, where god, or Whomever is in charge, doesn’t demand to be found.