How Does Your Garden Grow?
In order to have a good garden, we need a good start. Often the ground is hard and needs to be broken up, hoed and raked before the seeds can be planted.
How like that is our life! In order to have a beautiful life, we need to cultivate relationships, whether with others or with ourselves. We need to break through the hard ground of pride or lack of self-esteem. Just as over the winter, the ground becomes dry and hard, we go through emotional winters that harden us. This hard layer prevents the seeds of love, compassion and understanding from ever sprouting. We need to turn this over, break up the clumps of anger, resentment, and hurt. We need to rake the rocks of despair, disappointment and hopelessness out of the soil.
We are then ready to prepare for planting the seeds that will bring beauty and wholesomeness into our lives. When planting flowers or vegetables, we begin by deciding what we want to grow, what we want to reap. We visualize how we will arrange our garden. Usually, vegetables are planted in rows, but flowers often are planted in a myriad of patterns and designs. Gardeners map out how they want the garden to be designed but they must take into consideration that some plants need a lot of sun, while others require more shade.
In our life’s garden, we bask in the warmth of love – love of others for us and our love for others. We need to be exposed to this love – to allow its warmth to help us to be open in growth in our relationships. We cannot hide from it, but need to turn toward its healing rays.
The shade in our garden is the quiet times -times when we savor solitude. Perhaps it is a good book or video, a quiet walk in the woods or by a pond, or just sitting out of doors and watching the sun as it sets, followed by the rosy afterglow. It may be the quiet wonder that steals into our hearts as we watch the beauty of millions of tiny stars like diamonds against the velvet blackness of the night sky. Prayer shades us from the harshness of some of life’s experiences. It allows us grow slowly, but steadily into the person we are meant to be. Times of quiet meditation, contemplating the good in our lives, thoughtfully walking a labyrinth, allows us to be filled with gratitude providing the shade we so often need.
Bulbs are planted in the fall and there is no sign of life all winter long. Perennials, too, lie beneath the surface, waiting for sun and warmth to bring them to life again. There are people in our lives who are also waiting for someone to reach out to them. Our words of kindness are like the sunshine – healing rays that encourage them to break through and grow. Our kind actions such as phone calls, visits, cards, sharing conversations, are like the rain that softens the soil of their loneliness. The simple act of listening, letting them know that we do care about them and their lives, is like the sun returning after a rain, warming the moist soil and allowing them to come alive again.
Gentle rain softens the soil, allowing the roots to spread out and take hold. It helps the life giving nutrients enter those roots. Heavier rain pelts the plants, but they are strengthened as they grow and stand up to the assault. These heavier rains, often riding the wind, are the disappointments and sorrows we struggle with in life. Although painful, they too contribute to our growth.
The bugs that enter our garden are the insidious little irritations of modern society. We often struggle to remove beetles, aphids, and other bugs that bore into our plants and take life from them. So, too, we have a constant barrage of self-defeating, deflating bites from TV, newspapers and magazines. We are constantly being told that we are failures – too old, too fat, too thin or too weak. These ideas attack our self-esteem and make us want to rush out and buy whatever the advertisers tell us will make us look younger, thinner, beautiful, fun loving and energetic. We are encouraged to fill our bodies with chemicals in order to look like the people on TV. Perhaps if we just removed these bugs by not watching TV and reading articles that put us own, but instead keep a positive attitude when talking with others, we would grow physically and emotionally stronger.
Every garden has weeds. They come with the territory. In our lives, the bad habits we allow to get a foothold are weeds. Some of us have to keep pulling out the weeds of anger, of f gossiping, of procrastination, of excess eating, drinking, smoking or whatever we are tempted to do that is harmful to our growth. These urges keep returning and need to be pulled out over and over again to allow the goodness in our lives to be nourished.
A good garden takes work, and we know that a good life does too. Just as the hoe keeps the dirt around the plants loose, we need to continue to work the soil of our lives, keeping it loose to allow the good we have planted to take root, grow stronger, expand and grow fruitful.
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These articles are published in the Spirit of Bainbridge every three weeks, and mailed to every home and business in Auburn and Bainbridge Townships (zip code 44023).
Additional copies are distributed locally at Arabica, Bainbridge Library, Lowe’s Greenhouse, Sirna’s Market & Deli and other locations in Auburn, Aurora, Bainbridge, Chagrin Falls, Chesterland, Solon and South Russell.
Approximately 7,300 copies of Spirit of Bainbridge are circulated.