MY GRANDMOTHER CAME to me in a dream. It was the first day of the COVID-19 pandemic and I knew I would not be able to visit her. My daughter had just come down with pneumonia; I did not want to put my grandmother at risk. When she came to me in my dream, through the front window, covered in a thin curtain, I could see her shadow as she walked onto my porch. As I neared the door, through the window I could see that she did not knock but instead walked over to the flowers on my porch. They were a gift from her to me. She touched each one and leaned in close as if in conversation with them. She never turned to knock on my door. I woke up.
I called my grandmother to recount the dream. She told me she had hoped I was taking care of the plants. Ruda (rue), sábila (aloe vera), and Corona de Cristo (Christ plant) adorn my front porch. I’ve since added rosemary, jade, and a few others. Care of the earth has always been imperative. In our current times, survival will depend on how we treat what God created to meet our basic needs.
Our capitalistic and technologically advanced society teaches us to have our finger on the pulse, to be ahead of the game. Gardening teaches us to wait with faithful endurance. We were created with the capacity to wait. Care for our environment is considered “justice work” when it should be common practice. I’ve started to scoop out water from our sinks and bathtubs to water our plants, in an effort to conserve. The labor is daunting, and there are days I am too tired to scoop. In the grand scheme of things, it seems I’m not contributing much, but the grass is content and so are my plants. The earth rejoices.
Amid the coronavirus pandemic, the future is unpredictable. Schools have shut down, school courses have migrated online, countries have shut their borders to those of us from the United States. (Oh, how the tables have turned!) We may not wake from this mess, but we will learn from it. We will learn what it means to care for our neighbor, care for the earth, help the widow, and supply for the orphan. Faith will call us into a deep action—if it has not already, in the face of such wickedness as children separated from their parents at our southern border. Our Christian teaching will center its greatest message for us: “Love [and care for] one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”
Carolina Hinojosa-Cisneros is a Tejana, Chicana, and Mujerista from San Antonio, where she is a graduate student at Our Lady of the Lake University. She is the 2019 recipient of the Rubem Alves Award in Theopoetics.
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