One of the best things about gardening is the sharing that goes on, be it the sharing of information or seeds or vegetables. This poem was shared with us during the workshop I took up at Esalen and the author was kind enough to allow me to share it here as well. I think it's particularly appropriate at this time of year as we spend more time tending our gardens.
Tending the Garden
(from Messages to Me: Words Collected on the Road to Silence)
by Meg Coyle Irsay
And so I tend to my garden, the plot of mind that has been given me to live in, the plot of mind that provides for my only need, to express the One Love.
Every thought is a seed that will grow in the soil of my life and bear fruit. I only need awareness with which to carefully study the laws of cause and effect. And so I learn which seeds will grow to become weeds, and which ones flowers. I dismiss any thought that I do not share with God before it takes root. I pull my attention from thoughts I recognize to be fearful. I turn away from delusions and let them whither when I find the fruit they bear to be foul to my heart's tongue.
If I look, I will see, and when I see, I know which seeds to cultivate for the truth to flourish. I see the seeds of my joy are tiny, and I know they need quiet and dark spaces to germinate. I see that nothing grows here in my garden without the light of my attention, without the water of my intention. And so I know, and so I grow, and so I dance with all the aspects of living, happily tending my garden, praising God as I do my work, praising God to have work to do, grateful for the tools of my hands, and my heart, and the Son, and the wind and the rain, grateful for all of it.
I rejoice in bringing the fruits of me to the market place of the present moment. I love to exchange with all the other gardeners. The marketplace of this moment is abundant as we exchange our fruit and nourish each other with what we have observed and learned while tending our gardens. All of this we do under the Son. I celebrate those God directs to my heart to be nourished, and I offer what has been grown in me, knowing it is One in the same.