We had pretty much given up on the garlic this year.  

Although we never caught any critters in the act of sabotaging our garlic cultivation attempts, we kept finding the cloves dug up and moved from where we planted them. The cloves weren’t eaten, but something apparently kept seriously considering the prospect of snacking on them. I’m assuming it was squirrels, and although I’ve considered the possibility of vampiric rodents that couldn’t abide the garlic, I suspect the truth is much simpler.  

Whatever was digging up the garlic, we just decided to let it do its thing. We stopped worrying about the garlic and moved on. Honestly, we probably didn’t care deeply enough about the garlic to keep fighting our unseen adversary.  

And then, this week, much to our surprise, healthy green garlic scapes had burst from the ground! Something we had given up on became a source of delight. Apparently, our garlic saboteur had given up on it, too.  

It reminded me of some of the personal work I’ve been doing this summer around internal family systems. Particularly the idea that what we fight against within ourselves becomes stronger.  

When we go to battle against some part of us that we find “embarrassing” or “shameful” or “bad,” that part of us digs in its heels and resists being eliminated from the larger constellation of our being. Those parts of us apparently find it invigorating to have someone to fight against. So, we wind up spending time and energy on something we reject about ourselves rather than allowing our deepest values to inspire us to create something meaningful.  

I wonder if this concept relates to our relationships with other people as much as our internal relationships with ourselves. If we spend all our resources resisting and battling ideologies and behaviors we find abhorrent, do we neglect opportunities to create something different? Something that manifests our life-affirming values? Something that nurtures the world around us toward greater wholeness and well-being?  

I’m not suggesting that our rodential adversary stopped digging up our garlic cloves because we stopped fighting it. I’m not sure it registered to a little beastie that we belligerently insisted on replanting the garlic every time we found it dug up. But our experience was that when we stopped fighting against something we didn’t like and turned our attention to other things, the thing we were fighting against lost power.  

I’m also not suggesting that we should ignore painful or harmful things happening in the world. As tempting as it is to bury our heads in the sand and pretend that everything is fine, we have a lot of cause for concern and heartache and deep grief. So much that we could drown in it.  

And yet, maybe the thing that gives us life and breath and hope is not combatting all the sources of pain and grief and holy rage. Maybe the thing that gives us life and breath and hope is devoting our time and energy—at least some intentional portion of it—to creating something that restores beauty and wholeness and well-being.

Something that builds a better world despite all the things that try to dig it up or devour it.   

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