The Joy of Growth

 

08.20.2021 THE JOY OF GROWTH A few years ago, a friend gave me a tiny aloe vera plant as a housewarming gift. I was instantly taken by this sweet addition to my home, and started to steadily acquire more and more house plants for my indoor garden. Caring for them was an exciting new hobby, and offered a way to connect to nature in my city apartment.  This past year, as the Covid-19 pandemic kept me inside and feeling helpless, I found comfort in caring for my plants. As I watched them grow, I felt joy with every new leaf. Some of my plants have thrived, while others, despite my best efforts, have died. My tiny garden reminds me not to hold onto things too tightly. To love and care for the plants is the best that I can do, but there is so much more involved in the life of a plant that I can’t control.  The three teachings in this Weekend Reader invite us to recognize the wisdom we can learn from our plant counterparts. I hope these stories encourage you to have patience with your own growth, too.  —Martine Panzica, Digital Editorial Assistant, LionsRoar.com

Finding Myself in the Garden Valerie Brown returns to gardening to recover her broken spirit, and discovers what really grows in a garden is love. The first foundation of mindfulness is awareness of the body. Mindful awareness invites the practitioner to see, touch, taste, and smell — to be fully alive in the present moment to the great gift of life. Mindfulness is an innate quality in every person that supports awakening to the non-reoccurring nature of each and every moment of daily life. For me, gardening became a theology of love that invited me back to my senses, which were deadened by too muchness, too soon-ness, and too fastness.

Happiness Is a Kind of Flower Thich Nhat Hanh shares a brief yet profound meditation on how happiness grows from suffering like a flower. A lotus can only grow in mud. If there were no mud, there would be no lotus flower. There’s a very close connection between suffering and happiness, just as there is between mud and lotus. Real happiness is possible when we have the right view of suffering and happiness. It’s the same as front and back, right and left. The right cannot exist without the left; the left cannot exist without the right. Happiness cannot exist without suffering.

The Garden Path It takes root; it grows; it blooms. Cheryl Wilfong on how meditation practice is cultivated like a garden. When trying to transplant a spiritual practice, however, we first need to clear a space in which to sow the seeds of mindfulness. Taking care of a burgeoning Garden of All the Things We Want to Do requires rushing. Our lives might feel more like a loudly babbling stream than a still forest pool. We can try to maintain a way-too-big Garden of Busyness, or we can tend only as much as our tender hearts can open to.

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