Lessons from the Garden of Life

Photo by 3Winc - click on photo to go to his Flickr area.


How fast the years pass.

As a young girl, the nuns always told us what we planted we grew and our harvest would be filled with weeds and thistles in rocky soil unless we changed our ways.

They threatened us.
Tried to control by fear.

It would take decades until I would hear that small still voice whisper to me that they had no clue how to prepare us for life.
They were so out of touch.
They were not gardeners tending to the fertile soil and the seedlings.
They did not lead by example.

Older and wiser, I now know that only when one is willing and ready to get their own hands dirty, immersed in the soil of life, can they really tend to it....and lead by example.

I love the following quote by May Sarton -may her kind and gentle soul rest in peace.

"True gardeners cannot bear a glove between the sure touch and the tender root,
Must let their hands grow knotted as they move with a rough sensitivity about under the earth,
between the rock and shoot, never to bruise or wound the hidden fruit.
And so I watched my mother's hands grow scarred,
She who could heal the wounded plant or friend with the same vulnerable yet rigorous love;
I minded once to see her beauty gnarled, but now her truth is given me to live,
As I learned for myself we must be hard to move among the tender with an open hand,
And, to stay sensitive up to the end, Pay with some toughness for a gentle world."

~May Sarton