Menucha, Part 2: A Secret Garden

I have been in rehearsals this past month for a musical production of "Secret Garden" -- that wonderful children's book so many of us read long ago.

I've loved the rehearsals: the music is incredibly moving -- rather like the story itself -- and our director has informed us that she sees the whole production as a metaphor for the secret garden that lives within each of us.

So I guess I should not have been surprised, when I went on retreat this weekend, to find that I kept encountering places that, in spite of the cold snows of winter, felt like Secret Gardens to me. So the title song, with its soaring melody, kept rolling through my head:

LILY (Colin's deceased mother) sings:

Come to my garden,
Nestled in the hills.
There I'll keep you safe beside me.

Come to my garden.
Rest there in my arms.
There I'll see you
Safely grown and on your way.

Stay there in the garden,
Where love grows free and wild.
Come to my garden.
Come, sweet child.

COLIN:
Lift me up and lead me to the garden,
Where life begins anew.
Where I'll find you,
And I'll find you love me too.