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Tuesday, May 22, 2012

My Garden/My Life


My Garden/My Life


Yesterday it was over 100 degrees. That’s not unusual around here this time of year, but it had me thinking about the welfare of my garden. We have built border walls along the sides of our hillside lot (the reasons are a story for another day) and constructed them in such a way that each of them is a planting bed—a perpetual raised garden. We continually amend the soil, water, cultivate, shade the more sensitive plants from the onslaught of the sun, and everything else we must do to eke out our spring, summer and fall vegetable supplements.  The flowers also bring us great joy. A few plants even make it through the winter if we can keep tabs on the overnight lows (rare dips below freezing) and cover the garden when necessary.

Gardening is a lot of work—there is no denying that. It probably costs more than buying most of the veggies at the store, all told. I constantly fight heat and drought and weeds and bugs and birds, and this year a squirrel, who decided he particularly liked my bell peppers and started munching about a third of each of those away long before they had the chance to grow to full size and turn red. Why, then, do I continue to do it?

As these thoughts rolled through my head yesterday, it occurred to me that in many ways, a garden is a “type and shadow” of life, particular where spiritual learning is concerned.

·         To have any hope of yielding a garden harvest, we must first prepare the soil. It must be rich and fertile, ready to receive the seeds, and eager to make them grow. So, too, must the spirit be prepared to receive learning. A person must want knowledge and seek after it for it to really take root.

·         A garden requires constant nourishment. As the garden must have water and sunlight, the spirit must have daily input: prayer, scripture study, pondering.

·         There are always forces at work that would hinder the growth of the garden. These have their counterparts in spiritual matters:

o   Excessive heat/sun: There are challenges that come to each of us that “burn” us. They singe our souls and cause us to faint for a time. We must learn to shield ourselves from those things when possible. And when they are events that come unbidden and unanticipated, we must have reserves in our “roots” that will give us the strength to endure until better days return.

o   Weeds: These insidious little plants start slowly, unobtrusively, often hidden by the foliage of the cultivated plants. The gardener must watch carefully for them and pluck them out when they are small. If not, they quickly grow massive root structures as well as plants above ground. They sap the strength from the soil, use up the water, and in many ways hamper the growth of the plants we want. At that stage they are hard to kill.

The weeds of life are those things that keep our spirits from being nourished. That includes the things that pull our attention from prayer, study and pondering, as well as the pursuits that directly opposed good: pornography, gossip, inappropriate media, etc. Those things not only steal the strength from the spiritual beds we have prepared, but they beat back what has already begun to grow and keep it from flourishing.

o   Critters: Their effect is similar to that of weeds. But while weeds are just looking for a lovely space in which to grow themselves, the critters are actively out to destroy what is growing. Okay, both weeds and critters are just trying to stay alive, following the paths that have been carved for them, but there’s a higher order involved here. I don’t mind sharing a tomato or two with a hungry bird (though I’ll admit I was a little dismayed about the peppers), but when the whole ecosystem of cute little animals decides my garden is Eden and moves in, I have to do something to protect my harvest.

So it is in other aspects of life. There are events, opportunities, happenstances that may be inviting, benign, or just outright enticing. They may or may not be insidious on their own, but the end result is the same. They pull us from the things we ought to be doing: developing our talents, learning eternal truths, serving others, etc. They keep us from achieving what we set out to accomplish. We must assert ourselves  as the beings at the top of the food chain and take charge of what we allow to fill our time.

·         Then there is the harvest. Anyone who has experienced the fulfillment of picking produce from the vine, of washing it, still warm from the sun and full of flavor, and enjoying the full-bodied taste of food thus grown can tell you that all the effort is worth it. Then there is the joy of sharing with others (and I’m not talking about pawning off unwanted zucchini).

We have a few friends who love okra. I personally can’t stand the stuff, but it seems to like our garden, so I plant some for them. We also know a little boy who loves to eat home-grown cucumbers more than candy. More than once, I have bagged up a bunch of the relative few we have raised to maturity and given them to him, just to give him that joy. It brings me great satisfaction as well.

How does this relate to spiritual growth? We put in the effort, we begin to feel the changes in ourselves, and we want to share this joy—to help others feel what we feel. We do that by serving. There are many ways to render aid, each suited to different people in different combinations , and each intended to fill a different need. The need may be compassion, further light and knowledge, self-confidence, physical nourishment, or any combination of a host of other things. The list is endless, for we all need something, and most often God fills our needs through other people.  (Learning to serve others should one of the lessons we learn while we are on the planet.) The reward is much like that of sharing produce, but far more profound.  Bringing others peace or comfort or enlightenment adds to our own joy—deepens it, defines it, enhances it.  It so warms us that we want to continue giving.  

And that, I am convinced, is one of the reasons we continue to garden. Whether we are conscious of it or not, we feel the connection to the earth in ways that our souls understand, which we may never consciously appreciate unless we seek to know. We are connected to the earth in so many ways.  The metaphor goes on and on.

Hmmm….. Maybe there’s a book here….
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