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….
.