Soul Gardening


This is a photo of our garden, one from eight years ago, one from yesterday.  It really is becoming a lush oasis of green, and of food!  The fruit trees we planted six years ago are producing more and more, and the vege patch my man tends gets bigger and bigger!  It is very satisfying to be sustained and fed by this place, by this home.

It struck me yesterday that these photos are a visual metaphor for our soul work.  We feel the call to growth, we plant the seeds, we try something new, we fail, we rest and hibernate, we rearrange, we remove dead wood and bury dead parts of ourselves to turn them into compost.

We spread this compost on the ground, we plant more seeds, we try something else new, we relish the light of Sun and Moon, we water ourselves, we find what feeds us, we stretch and blossom, we taste some first fruits, we are inspired by other gardens, get an inkling of what’s possible in ten, twenty, thirty years’ time.  We rest.

We plant more seeds.  Some work, some don’t.  And on and on, season after season, cycle after cycle.  Our growth is inevitable.  Over time, every landscape changes; we will never stay the same.

But we have the opportunity to curate our soul garden, rather than live with wild seeds blown in from elsewhere that offer us little nourishment.  We can plant the fruit trees that are our favourites, faithfully pull the weeds that are our constant companions, build our stamina and systems for preserving the harvest, hone the art of decay and letting go.

We can come to accept the ecosystem and requirements of our particular good ground and let go of the need to change ourselves so much.  We discover, slowly over time, what THRIVES within us, and what such thriving requires.  Increasingly we are sustained and fed by this place, by this home, within.

And what it takes is to keep showing up.  To commit to this patch of inner ground.  To listen to what it needs.  And to keep showing up.