Entering the garden of the soul
Wherever we go, we are with our selves, a self that is at once both intimate and hidden. We see the world and act on it, we interact with other individuals, and yet the self by which we do these things is rarely open to our awareness.
How can we come to know our inner self? Various traditions have described the inner self or soul in terms that reflect a worldview or body of faith. Their philosophical or theological terms however can be obstructions as much as tools if we are not already deeply familiar with them.
These little essays offer a different entry into the garden of the soul. These reflections sprouted on Sunday mornings spent in a garden, not in a church. Some draw on personal experience and others on the biology of plants. Their simple and homely character may help some readers to see within themselves a garden of traits and characteristics and to appreciate their own particular gifts and potential for growth.
The passages marked with a
offer space for your notes and reflections.
Seeds
A secret life lies hidden in every seed. Sometimes too minute to be seen by the eye, this small form contains in itself the possibility of growth. Soft, defenseless, and nearly featureless, this embryo has a pattern within it that can grow into a plant, particular, graceful, and lively. Each seed is a seed of some one kind of plant, not of every kind nor of some vague generic "plant" that averages the strengths and vulnerabilities of other plants.
A seed waits for its own season of growth. Some will sprout as soon as water moistens them. Other seeds must be frozen before they sprout. Some seeds have only a year or two that they can respond with growth. Others, like a lotus, may wait in mud and darkness for decades before sprouting. Some are vulnerable and their thin skin needs delicate handling. Others are so hard that they need to be ground in the gizzard of a bird, roughed up by pebbles, before water can enter them and help them sprout.
Size does not make a seed. The seeds of a cardinal flower are as fine as dust yet can grow into a five foot tall flame that feeds hummingbirds. The seed of a coconut palm is large enough to knock out a man who passes under the parent unsuspectingly. The potential for growth is not limited by size.
A seed is more than an embryo. Each one contains some food from its parent, whether as slim as the orchid’s few grains or the pound of coconut meat. Without this nourishment a seed cannot sprout and begin an independent life. An embryo takes its substance from that parental store, but as it grows, it also transforms what it takes.
When you reflect on the garden of your own soul, what has grown there from seeds that sprouted in your childhood? That sprouted when you were in your teens? Have some seeds taken decades to sprout?
Have some of those seeds only sprouted after what seemed like a deadly cold? Were some roughened and abraded into life by a grinding experience that left those seeds open to drink in water that had been blocked before?
Which of the seeds of yourself were as fine as Cardinal flower seeds? Which ones were as hard to miss as a coconut?
Are there seeds that have not yet been planted that you would like to add to your garden? Where can you find them?
Copyright 2019 Alice Haugen
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