The Glory of Gardening

“The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just on the body, but the soul.”– Alfred Austin 

“Life begins the day you start a garden.”– Chinese proverb

“When the world wearies and society fails to satisfy, there is always the garden.”– Minnie Aumonier

“Beauty surrounds us, but usually we need to be walking in a garden to know it.”Rumi.

The three weeks stay at home order in my state was a welcome relief for me, although I know with deep appreciation that others are still busy working at home, caring for others especially the sick and providing much needed services, while others have lost their job or loved ones. I hope they will all be relieved of their stress soon.       

For me I have series of projects that need some deep reflective thought and this time will allow me time to concentrate on beginning those projects.  I also look forward to the warmer weather in spring and the chance to open up my home and to work in the yard.  My evergreen bushes need trimming and within a week I will need to mow my lawn.  Of course, I love my walks around the neighborhood waving and saying hello to my neighbors. It is a chance to turn off social media and the world which can be so distracting.  I have read that pollution and carbon dioxide levels are dropping here and around the world.  It reminds me that we all reduce global warming if we plant trees and shrubs, purchase less products in plastic and paper, eliminate harmful toxins in our home and yard, compost our yard and home waste, and make fewer driving trips.  It also signals that we need new broad-based economic and progressive social thinking that is required in a digital and service/gig economy where all stakeholders are considered, not just the stockholders.  Instead of just reacting, we need to envision the world we want to live in and build the systems to achieve it.  This requires slowing down and planning.  We seem to think that economic activity is necessary to be happy and productive, when often the opposite is required.  I loved how in a visit to Europe years ago, one waiter served the entire restaurant and guests just enjoyed visiting and savoring the food. There was no rush to vacate the table for the next customer so the restaurant and waiters could make money. Although as Americans we pride ourselves on our independent culture and our economic power, we can combine the best of all worlds.

My first week’s focus is to research basic steps and products to reduce waste in our lives primarily focused on paper and plastic to share with friends and neighbors.  I also want to encourage my neighbors to plant trees and shrubs and to spend more time in their yards visiting with neighbors.  The global climate crisis stems from living in a world disconnected from nature.  The more we encourage wildlife and nature in our neighborhoods, the more we value the Earth and feel closer to God and to each other.  

This week I am also researching landscaping planning software to download to my Mac and begin to plan a bird and butterfly garden for my yard as well as other areas.  I was excited to see plant nurseries are open for business during this stay at home order. I look forward to placing an order with them.   So far since in moving in, I’ve planted three trees and ten shrubs in addition to the landscaping and tree provided by the builder. For years I have collected gardening and landscaping books and magazines.  My favorite garden magazine is English Gardens.  I know that cultivating gardens takes years of expertise and I am just beginning.    

The final project these three weeks is to begin a website on wordpress.org to move my blog Sacredsouls to and begin in earnest my goal to open minds to possibilities.  I expect this project will take the remainder of the year, but I need time to outline a plan for a book, the website, and classes.  I want us to remember that our Earth is a garden and within us the power to live in unity with it and each other and to create a better life for all of us, diverse in our cultures and individuality.  

Remember in these times to plant a garden this spring.

"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in." – Greek proverb

  

God's Plans

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11

I have an older friend who has spent her life as a missionary devoted to spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ and studying the Bible. She is extremely disciplined in her prayer life asking God for both guidance and help in carrying out his plan. Her focus is on a deep understanding of man’s separation from God, the reconciliation and redemption through Jesus Christ and the final fulfillment of his word and eschatology through the study of the Bible.  Everything for her is based on a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and the word as revealed to her in the Bible.  Her belief is grounded in Evangelism which believes to experience and know God and understand his plan you must immerse yourself in the Bible. She knows that verses within the Bible evoke a deep sense of comfort in his love and his protection.  Although very disciplined in her approach to immerse herself in the Word, she also has a longing to tap into a spirit or intuitive guidance from God, a direction from within by the Holy Spirit.

My life has been very different.  I worked until my early thirties never reading the Bible and without a faith in God or consideration of what happens at death.  But then at the age of thirty I found myself suddenly fighting injustice and abuse, but in doing so experiencing a sudden vision in which I felt an evil presence that was part of a more insidious plan to get a spiritual stronghold and spread destruction.   I found myself racked in terror sobbing because I was going to have to face it in order to stop it.  But the problem was I had no foundation in the Bible, no understanding of God as love, no faith of trust in God that goodness will prevail in life and death. In the process I lost everything, but I knew from that experience that humankind will not survive unless there is a higher power.  My saving grace was that God then showed me a vision of a sinless earth with no illness or death -  an immersive experience in a different reality.  

As a mystic I experience the presence of good and evil and I can sense the progression.  I am aware of alternative realities and outcomes.  My challenge has been to not be overwhelmed by the visions, not to feel responsible for the outcome, but to trust that God will handle the plan and that I need to be in the moment acting from love.  And step by step, God has opened doors to bring me closer to him and gave me the grace to make mistakes as I learned to manage my gifts.  My joy and inspiration come from feeling God in the human experience as expressed in nature, my friends and family, my pets, and the arts and science.  My relationship to God is also a deeper connection to the Universal Christ in the cosmos and spiritual realm as inspired by scripture.  I communicate with God and others through knowing or wordless thought. 

Although I possess these gifts, I understand a carpenter (like Jesus) can experience God through by practicing his or her craft or an environmentalist can experience a deep connection to God through nature.  To know or experience God can be to feel a deep appreciation for this gift of life and beauty of this world -  the joy in fulfilling one’s purpose.  My experience is there are no limits on how God can communicate with us his plan or his love for us and it is not limited to the Bible.  Love is the universal language and God is love.

My spiritual journey has not been an easy road, but I am confident that God has been preparing me in a plan that is unfolding and to have joy knowing I am part of that plan.  My thoughts come from a deep intuitive connection and experience with God that I find again and again reflected in scripture.  

Music as the Body and Spirit

This Saturday morning as I drank my coffee and the cats took turns cuddling in my lap with the sun streaming through the windows, I played the music of Queen, contemplating the beauty of the human experience. The night before I had attended a concert by the St. Louis Symphony performing Queen with a front band and singer. The crowd stood and sang, clapped, danced, and rocked to songs such as Do You Want to Live Forever, Bohemian Rhapsody, Somebody to Love, and We Are the Champions.  Music is the soul of life and the universe, bringing together in lyrics and sound the individual and collective human experience.  It is a form of prayer and worship because it calls us to celebrate both the pain and joy in our lives.  God is truly in all things, and music is a powerful voice from within.  The incredible human gift is to experience not only emotions, but to touch, hear and see.  To interact with God’s creation and to create with him.  

As I think about the future, in striving to fulfill my inner purpose in God’s plan focusing  on the love of God and each other,  my spiritual growth has come from my human experience and emotions.  We are not meant to live in a world devoid of human emotions.  The diversity of music in the world is a call to unity based on our human experience, not division.  I know as I write that the spirit and the body is both energy and mass, nothing speaks to that truth more than music.

So, play your favorite music, feel your emotions, and celebrate today the gift of body and spirit.

If Only We Believe

²⁶ But Jesus looked at them and said to them, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” 

    Matthew 19:26

“Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want, and you cannot help but get that reality.  It can be no other way.  This is not philosophy, this is physics.”  

   Albert Einstein

In our last Magis Writing group, we discussed what we hold onto in our lives that prevent us from moving forward.   When it was my turn, I said that we are holding onto a reality that only exists as a result of our combined consciousness.  I pointed out our world is both energy and mass, but we focus on our humanity and the world around us, not the energy that is within us and outside of us which creates an interconnected field.  Some scientists and philosophers postulate that energy is actually consciousness and that consciousness is present even in a seemingly lifeless object such as a rock.  One of the greatest mysteries in  physics is that there is no theory that adequately reconciles  the behaviors predicted in quantum mechanics and general relativity.   In quantum mechanics, because particles also act as waves, observation of a phenomenon will inevitability change the phenomenon.  Quantum mechanics also shows that a particle across the universe can be entangled with a particle on Earth with no observable cause.

So, as I ponder Albert Einstein’s quote that “matching the frequency of the reality you want, and you cannot help but get that reality,” I have to ask the question.  “If some scientists and philosophers are right – that energy is a frequency and consciousness is energy are we participating in the creation of the universe with our thoughts?”  It goes back to a simple philosophy question, “if a painting exists in your mind, does it exist in reality?”  My answer is yes.  Everything we imagine can come to be if we match our thoughts to the frequency of the reality that creates that painting.  As Einstein says – “it can be no other way.”

In a world focused on the physical we assume that the physical exists independent of our consciousness.  In a physical world we think and then act assuming that the action is independent of the thought to act, but in an entangled world it is not. Our thoughts are interrelated in a field of consciousness and one feeds the other.   However, a single thought cannot outweigh the combined thoughts of billions of people believing that the physical world is fixed within certain parameters and cannot change.  Therefore, we are locked into a reality that we are actually creating universally both by our thoughts and our actions.  The sad thing is that mystics who can actually envision a different reality and perceive thoughts within the field of consciousness, which contains both love and fear are often then classified as pathological and mentally ill.  The focus of the medical profession is to explain what can be observed and attribute it to a physical condition, discounting the experience and intuition of the mystic of the unobservable, the painting in our minds. 

What many Christians fail to understand because they focus on the literal, that Jesus in performing miracles was God because he was not confined by the reality of the world.  He knew physical death could not hold him.  In his teachings, he showed his disciples and others how to heal with their minds and touch.  What is also amazing is that a billion people believe he was the son of God based on a few repetitive chapters in a  2000 year old text.   Which based on a psychological analysis, could be due to a mass delusion of a billion minds.  But is it a delusion or part of the consciousness of God?  We fail to realize the significance of the words “with God all things are possible.”  Jesus was teaching us that God is the creator and as his children can actively participate in creation.  Yet we persist in the belief that our existence is solely human and not part of a larger consciousness.  I do believe there is a God, a consciousness that pervades everything and who is our creator, but he is asking us to participate in his creation and he sent his son Jesus, as God incarnate to show us the way.    

To transform our world into the Kingdom of Heaven, we must understand first that our thoughts as experience do affect the outcome and that love (the consciousness of God) is the most powerful force in the Universe and it must be our focus.  Secondly, we are eternal beings in a field of consciousness a manifestation of God. Third, prayer as taught in the Bible is a powerful force because it a focus of energy. 

 “Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. ¹⁹Again I say unto you, That if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in heaven. ²⁰For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. (KJV Matthew 18:19-20)

We must pray, act and reflect on a daily basis.  Prayer includes asking for guidance and light, reflecting on a Bible verse and our day, asking forgiveness, giving thanks, and resolving to do better the next day.  To act is to use our gifts and training to serve God and others.  To reflect is to think deeply after acting and before praying.  We must practice the fruits of the spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control and ask for the presence of the Holy Spirit.  The amazing thing is that God can be found in all things within creation and our individual differences are unique and beautiful gifts.  We must see ourselves as eternal beings or spirits first before our humanity.  We are not bound by this mortal existence.

Within us with the grace of God is the power to transform our earth home and to travel to the stars because consciousness is not bound by physical laws when sufficient numbers of us focus on love together.  We can bring into creation what we imagine (the Kingdom of Heaven) if we come to God like children. “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.  (NKJV Matthew 18:3)  

If only we believe.

        

The Final Train Stop

“The right train of thought can take you to a better station in life.” Anonymous

Last December I lost a very important person in my life, my former father-in-law who I have known for thirty-three years.  Both Dad and Mom have been a constant support for me even though I divorced their son over twenty-five years ago.  We would periodically attend church together and then have lunch at Denny’s near their home.  As each of them battled illnesses and lost family members and I lost my parents and endured my own struggles, we remained close.  I could feel their mounting sadness, especially Mom's sadness, as they said good-bye to family members and beloved friends.  A few weeks before Dad’s death, Mom posted on Facebook a beautiful story about a train in which we are all passengers, never knowing when our final stop would arrive, and we would debark.  The story said the best we can do is to create loving and joyful memories for those we leave behind on the train when we depart. 

Mom and I exchanged texts the last days of Dad’s life. I knew he was letting go by her words and that Mom in her heart knew it was close to his time to depart the train.  But I knew she couldn’t imagine a life without him after sixty years of daily companionship.  On one of Dad’s last days, I texted in response to her words – “it is hard to let go,” my spoken acknowledgement of the unspoken.   A few days later I sent a photo of my cat sitting in my Christmas tree, titled “trouble in the tree.”  Late that night she texted, “I have trouble in my tree too, Jack passed away today.”

The day after Dad’s funeral, their youngest son only fifty-eight, suffered a sudden brain aneurysm and almost lost his life.  It has been several months since his life saving brain surgery and he is making progress.  Mom, who hasn’t had time to mourn Dad, has been supporting her daughter-in-law and son in the rehab center and in her home.  She told me she told her husband not to take her son too, because she could not bear the pain.  God answered her faithfulness and love with a miracle saving her son.  

We spend so much time holding onto our lost dreams and past lives, that we can’t let go and move on.  I told Mom this morning not to be afraid to cry - to express her emotions because that is part of letting go.  We need to mourn the visions of what could have been as well as what was in order to move forward.  Of course, there are losses for some of us, like Mom’s loss where the emptiness and pain will remain for years, an unexpected reminder bringing forth the tears again. I also told Mom that although her son may be forever changed, that God will open new doors for him as he has for me. 

Mom used to collect snowmen and teddy bears from garage sales and flea markets.  She was constantly giving me the teddy bears which I finally gave away years later, their purpose served.   A few years ago, she was going to throw out the last of her snowmen when I told her to give them to me.  This year I decorated my home office with them remembering her love and support.   I will forever remember the teddy bears and snowmen she gave to tell me not to give up my dreams of a family even after she could no longer hope for me.  As Dad and eventually Mom departs the train, they will have only created loving and supportive memories in this mortal existence for those they leave behind, especially in me.   

  

A Driver and a Gardener

Drive – “propel or carry along by force in a specified direction.”

Garden – “a fertile and delightful spot or region.”

This morning in my Ignatian Spirituality group, the leader asked us to think about a time when we were overly attached or dependent on a situation, and then were hung out to dry.  In Ignatian Spirituality we are taught to practice discernment in our choices and detachment in the outcome. As someone who is a perfectionist who wants to control the outcome, this has been a hard lesson.  

I am a visionary and a mystic. I find it difficult to let go of a picture and focus on the path in front of me.  Upon reflection I now know I need to find a balance. I still visualize an outcome, but I am present in the moment knowing God’s plan in the end is always better than mine.  I have learned that asking questions and communicating an inspirational vision or feeling is my gift, letting others figure out the path or solution.

I have been torn in the last six years between two personal visions, not sure of my path or next steps.  I have tried to take both paths without fully choosing. As I contemplated the question I began to write, “My thoughts are of a garden.  A metaphysical spiritual place lost in centuries past.  Where flowers and grass grow naturally and unrestrained in an informal garden.”  I knew that I wanted to plan this garden and create a beautiful sacred valley seemingly untouched by time.  But another path also calls to me.  It is the path of sowing love and community and helping others to break open the mental and physical boxes that enclose us.  To do so through reflection, teaching and writing.  For a long time, I have been afraid to share my thoughts out loud, preferring to write after being severely punished for my creativity, ideas and gifts.  

In our group today we talked about the fear in our country, in some of our homes, and in our communities that prevent us from imagining a future for ourselves and our world.  Poverty can be a barrier, but even in poverty one can still dream.  However, violence and fear desolate and desecrates our imagination both as children and adults.  Evil and endless conflict destroys hope and faith that there can be a better future.  

Today I traded in my white Honda Civic for a cosmic blue Honda Insight Hybrid. My cars have always been a symbol for me.   I love the diversity of our humanity and I believe in the power of God and love.  Today I decided I am going to be a driver who inspires, and I am going to sow a garden in my community.  

Magis

The Jesuits use the term Magis, which means in Latin meaning "more" or "greater."  Some interpret Magis as meaning to accomplish or do more.  However, Magis is based on the other Jesuit Latin phrase “ad majorem Dei gloriam,” meaning "for the greater glory of God.”  Magis is to choose the action which gives the greatest glory to God.  

In reflecting I wondered if it is not about doing more, how do we determine what gives the greater glory to God?  My mind then wandered to contemplating humility.  Humility is defined as “a modest or low view of one's own importance; humbleness.”  Then I thought, shouldn’t we have joy and awe of our individual and collective gifts?  But I had to acknowledge a gift is “a thing given willingly to someone without payment.”

To give the greater glory of God, means to use our unique gifts for the love of God a force greater than ourselves and also in service of humanity.  It means not to disparage, discourage, or prevent others from using their gifts.  Humility is to practice excellence whether we are a craftsman, an artist, a teacher, a caretaker, a farmer, an engineer, a mother and father, a musician, an actor, a maintenance worker and share those gifts with others.  It means to be joyful in our individual and unique gifts knowing that we are all equal before the eyes of God.  Magis is when we maximize our gifts working in concert with each other knowing when we do, there are no limits to what we can accomplish with the grace of God.