Growing With My Garden

  The description of Graeme’s garden in Chapter 14 highlights one of GMD’s insistences, that is the importance of appreciating nature and feeling a kinship with it.   Such is a great help to a healthy spiritual life.  Donal remarks: “Man ought to learn of nature. . . . His work is, through the forms that nature gives him, to express the idea or feeling that is in him.” One of the unfortunate aspects of our present society is the way most people’s lives are severed from nature and it is looked upon simply as something to be exploited for our material benefit, rather than the environment which God created as a proper context for healthy spiritual lives.  Our novel begins with beautiful descriptions of Donal’s natural environment, and there are several throughout.  One of the strengths of GMD’s writing is the giving of such descriptions.  Donal’s interaction with nature is one of the factors that contributes to his stature as an ideal Christian, enabling him to conduct himself as he d

  Donal’s conversation with Davie in Chapter 13 introduces one of the chief themes of the novel, that is the need to understand oneself aright, which we shall see as we read further along is symbolically placed in terms of the larger mystery of the working of God within the  human consciousness. In so many of his writings GMD explores the mystery of the nature of the human psyche in relation to the divine.  One provocative instance occurs in the fairy story The Princess and the Goblins, which was written some ten years before our novel.  In that story the castle in which Irene lives can be seen as a symbol of the human mind, with the great-great grandmother–a symbol of the divine presence–dwelling in its uppermost heights, while deep down below is a colony of goblins, representing our baser instincts.  Irene, the main character, dwells in the middle.  She has freedom to climb up high and visit with the divine, or she can be enthralled and captured by inner evil tendencies.        

  As the story opens, we see Donal walking across Scotland towards an unknown destiny, which turns out to be living in a large castle where he is to be a tutor to a young boy.  His early life has been given in the novel Sir Gibbie, where he is seen growing up as a shepherd boy, spending his days tending sheep and cattle and delighting in his rural environment.  As a young man he went to college, got his degree, and is now facing life as a young adult. Thus oriented to life, Donal displays convincingly throughout the novel ideal Christian attitudes, and in the first chapter GMD describes that utter reliance upon God which produces inner peace in all the outer circumstances of life.  Donal accepts negative circumstances without complaint and expectantly awaits what may happen next.  Many passages are memorable, such as: “He had no certain goal, though he knew his direction and was in no haste.  He had confidence in God and in his own powers as the gift of God, and knew that wherev