Faithful
Gardeners
“Help us
to be ever faithful gardeners of the spirit, who know that without
darkness nothing come to birth, and without light nothing flowers.”
May Sarton
I've been thinking about gratitude a lot, and trying to extend gratitude to what is birthed in
darkness within me. Stirred by the “cloud of unknowing” that
Barbara Brown Taylor spoke so eloquently about at Awakening Soul, I
have delved into the soil of my own life-journey, turning over stones
and even dredging up a few boulders.
May Sarton compared our
life-journey to a garden saying, “A garden is always a series of
losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself.” If you've
ever gardened, you know the truth of that—some soils are better
than others, and some things simply do not grow well in certain
places. My friend, Andy, has planted a cherry tree every year for the
last ten or so. He loves cherries and they remind him of his
childhood home in the northern mid-west. But every year the trees
shrivel and die. Only choke-cherry trees are native to Alabama—birds
love them, but humans don't. Andy doesn't give up, but alas...no
cherries yet...not so much as a leaf. Now, blackberries, figs,
peaches—oh, yes. What a triumph of gardening they are in the deep south.
Gardens are a labor of love that sometimes loves you back and
sometimes breaks your heart—just like life.
Some questions to
consider: Do we garden only for food, or for the simple love of soil?
Can we love the garden even when it fails us? Unlike my friend, who
is determined to grow cherries where they do not flourish, can we
learn from our failures, and move on? Better yet, can we embrace
those failures with gratitude as necessary teachers, and celebrate
our triumphs as gifts? Can we take sustenance from our mistakes and
use them as compost to grow the things that actually feed our souls?
Can I? Can you? Do we continue planting cherry trees, or try for
figs? Actually, this time of year, how about collards?
In the Spirit,
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment