27.11.2025
Book Launch in Zion: A War on ‘Busyness’
The Revd David White, Rector of Zion Parish, launched his book, The Gardened Soul: The Emotional Connection to More, recently in Zion Church. Drawing on his experience as a spiritual director, priest and horticulturist, the book explores gardening as an embodied contemplative spiritual practice.
The main speakers were Professor Cathriona Russell, Trinity College, Dublin and Róisín Pye Alexander, Laudato Si’ Officer at Trócaire. In his address, the Revd David said the time had come to change the narrative on ‘busyness’.
“I’m announcing today that I’ve started a War on Terror. I know it sounds extreme, but there’s nothing else for it,” he said. “And the war is on the terrorising word ‘busy’. Every day, I hear people speaking about being so busy – in my own head, I hear voices telling me that I’m terribly busy. It’s high time to flip the script and change the narrative because ‘busy’ is our enemy.”
He continued: “Thinking we’re busy and feeling that we’re always busy squeezes the joy out of our lives; it fools us into thinking that time is scarce and threatened. It also traps us in our minds, where a perpetual word–loop makes us feel small, lost, and forever catching up.
“My little book is a modest attempt at a different narrative. Why not dream of a time when we can relax into our bodies and draw on the riches that come from reflection, perspective–making and rest?
“Gardening can be the antidote to busyness – allowing us to escape our minds so that we can inhabit the whole of our bodies. Gardening has the potential to lead us out of the dark forest of terrifying thoughts and into the vitality of a biodiverse garden of experience.”
The book can be purchased from the publishers Wipf & Stock (The Gardened Soul– Wipf and Stock Publishers) and any other good booksellers.
