Create a Soul Garden for your Living

Creating a Sacred Heart and Soul Space..(Powerful Story)

Read this powerful story about growing a mind, heart and soul garden and looking after your body, mind, heart, life and soul for at this very moment in time and on this day, you are sowing the seeds of your future life through your thoughts, emotions, feelings, prayers, beliefs, breathing and attitude. Remember to keep your thoughts and feelings as positive as you can be, and, hopefully you will create a positive outcome and attitude to your living ....

There are times on our journey through life that we simply need to tend to our heart and soul just like we tend to our body. We should try if we can, although the unpredictability of life can hamper it, but we should always try to make a beautiful flourishing sacred, heart and soul place of our life. The beginning of any flourishing, beautiful, sustainable, and overflowing spiritual life is having a devotional sacred, heart and soul time and place. We create a sacred, heart and soul place where we can come to rest, appreciate and worship. Create your own sacred, heart and soul space where you can soak in the Presence of God and be restored in your devotions. In the process, you will begin to expand and notice that every space becomes sacred. You are bringing and planting heaven on earth. You are creating a sacred, heart and soul place that grounds you, a place that grounds you in eternity and in God.

There is much talk in our world today about tending to the garden of our bodies. All types of media pour out the idea of taking care of one’s body, so we can be healthy, attractive and live longer. But what of our soul? Surely, it has importance as well. Perhaps even more than we think! Every day, we have a choice whether or not to tend to our soul garden. Yes, we can neglect it if we want. But I feel when you neglect your sacred, heart and soul garden, the beauty and radiance of who you really are can become overgrown with weeds of despair, busyness, worry, fear, ego importance or confusion. We can lose sight of who we really are. For me looking after the life of your spirit and soul is like cultivating a real garden. A beautiful and balanced garden does not happen without effort. An important step in garden maintenance is to cultivate the source of the garden which is the soil and I always do this for my soul garden through prayer, contemplation and reflection. With proper care, reflection, contemplation, prayer and love, our spirit and soul garden can thrive and flourish. However, should we neglect ourselves and our soul garden, we wilt, sink, fade, and wither like untended flowers. This neglect often comes during difficult, stressful, worrying, sad and chaotic times in our lives. But spending time reflecting and praying, be it for 2 minutes or 2 hours at anytime of the day or night, can help restore and rejuvenate us and give us strength to allow us to resume running around dealing with life's ups and downs. Visualizing the soul as a garden helps us to really feel an inner space and peace that is sacred, beautiful and filled with life. Here, we can sow the seeds of all our most cherished loving and wonderful life experiences and weed out the self-defeating doubts and worries we have acquired from the time on our life's journey so far. We must try to establish this awareness more firmly in our lives in the present moment of now so that we can experience our souls more consciously. Such efforts can be distilled down to a central, core practice of one of quieting the habit-mind and concentrating, contemplating and praying fully on the moment at hand. As time moves forward on your sometimes short journey of life you may be surprised to discover a bountiful harvest of blessings, not only in your own body but in your radiant sacred spirit, heart and soul, as well. In setting aside a sacred, heart and soul place for the sole purpose of prayer and meditation it will become the cornerstone of your good spiritual practice. Have fun with it. Make it a project of joy and love. You are creating a place of rest, not labor. You want to make a place that draws you in, not a place to work. You are creating a sanctuary, a holy place, a prayer garden, a sacred space. You are establishing a place of refuge in the world, a place where your mind, heart and soul can shift gears when you sit down. As usual a story from my Nana Scully's prayer book might help

The Story of John's Garden

John was a quiet man. He didn't talk much. He would always greet you with a big smile and a firm handshake. Even after living in our parish community for over 50 years, no one could really say they knew him very well. Before his retirement, he took the city link red bus to work each morning. The lone sight of him walking down the road to the bus stop often worried us. He had a slight limp from an old sporting accident. Watching him, we worried he may not make it through our changing community with its ever-increasing random violence, gangs and drug activity.

When he saw the flyer on our local parish church bulletin board asking for volunteers for caring for the gardens around our beautiful church, he responded in his characteristically unassuming manner. Without fanfare, he just signed up. He was well into his 80th year when the very thing we had always feared finally happened. He was just finishing his watering the flowers and gardens for the day when three hooligans approached him. Ignoring their attempt to intimidate him, he simply asked, "Would you like a drink from the hose?" The tallest and toughest-looking of the three said, "Yeah, sure," with a cheeky smile. As John offered the hose to him, the other two grabbed John's arm, throwing him down. As the hose snaked crazily over the ground, dousing everything in its way, John's assailants stole his retirement watch and his wallet, and then fled. John tried to get himself up, but he had been thrown down on his bad leg. He lay there trying to gather himself as the priest and sacristan came running out to help him. Although the priest had witnessed the attack from his window, he couldn't get there fast enough to stop it. "John, are you okay? Are you hurt?" the priest kept asking as he helped John to his feet. John just passed a hand over his brow and sighed, shaking his head. "Just some young hooligans. I hope they'll wise-up someday." His wet clothes clung to his slight frame as he bent to pick up the hose. He adjusted the nozzle again and started to water. Confused and a little concerned, the priest asked, "John, what are you doing?" "I've got to finish my watering. It's been very dry lately," came the calm reply. Satisfying himself that John really was alright, the priest could only marvel. John was a man from a different time and place.

A few weeks later the three returned. Just as before, their threat was unchallenged. John again offered them a drink from his hose. This time they didn't rob him. They wrenched the hose from his hand and drenched him head to foot in the icy water. When they had finished their humiliation of him, they sauntered off down the road, throwing catcalls and curses, falling over one another laughing at the hilarity of what they had just done. John just watched them. Then he turned toward the warmth giving sun, picked up his hose, and went on with his watering. The summer was quickly fading into autumn. John was doing some tilling when he was startled by the sudden approach of someone behind him. He stumbled and fell into some evergreen branches. As he struggled to regain his footing, he turned to see the tall leader of his summer tormentors reaching down for him. He braced himself for the expected attack. "Don't worry old man. I'm not going to hurt you this time." The young man spoke softly, still offering the tattooed and scarred hand to John. As he helped John get up, the man pulled a crumpled bag from his pocket and handed it to John. "What's this?" John asked. "It's your stuff," the man explained. "It's your stuff back. Even the money in your wallet." "I don't understand," John said. "Why would you help me now?" The young man shifted his feet, seeming embarrassed and ill at ease. "I learned something from you," he said. "I ran with the hooligans and hurt people like you. We picked you because you were old and we knew we could do it. But every time we came and did something to you, instead of yelling and fighting back, you tried to give us a drink. You didn't hate us for hating you. You kept showing love against our hate." He stopped for a moment. "I couldn't sleep after we stole your stuff, so here it is back." He paused for another awkward moment, not knowing what more there was to say. "That bag's my way of saying thanks for straightening me out, I guess." And with that, he walked off down the road. John looked down at the sack in his hands and gingerly opened it. He took out his retirement watch and put it back on his wrist. Opening his wallet, he checked for his wedding photo. He gazed for a moment at the young bride that still smiled back at him from all those years ago. He died one cold day after Christmas that winter. Many people attended his funeral in spite of the weather. In particular, the priest noticed a tall young man that he didn't know sitting quietly in a distant corner of the church. The priest spoke of John's garden as a lesson in life. In a voice with shed tears, he said, "Do your best in life and make the garden of your soul as beautiful as John's garden. We will never forget John and his garden made beautiful by his soul."

The following spring another flyer went up in the parish church bulletin board. It read: "Person needed to care for John's soul garden." The flyer went unnoticed by the busy parishioners until one day when a knock was heard at the priest's office door. Opening the door, the priest saw a pair of scarred and tattooed hands holding the flyer. "I believe this is my job, if you'll have me," the young man said. The priest recognized him as the same young man who had returned the stolen watch and wallet to John. He knew that John's kindness had turned this young man's life around. As the priest handed him the keys to the garden shed, he said, "Yes, go take care of John's garden and honor him and make a beautiful garden of your soul." The man went to work and, over the next several years, he tended the flowers and vegetables just as John had done. In that time, he went to college, got married, and became a prominent member of the parish and community. But he never forgot his promise to John's memory and kept the garden as beautiful as he thought John would have kept it. One day he approached the priest and told him that he couldn't care for the garden any longer. He explained with a shy and happy smile, "My wife just had a baby boy last night, and she's bringing him home on Saturday." "Well, congratulations!" said the priest, as he was handed the garden shed keys. "That's wonderful! What's the baby's name?" "John," he replied.

As a final thought, always remember like John to share from your soul garden the seeds of love, mercy, forgiveness, truth, kindness, compassion and hospitality to your world around you. Try to plant your spirit and soul garden the way God might do it as he would firstly, plant three rows of peas: Peace of mind, Peace of heart, Peace of soul. He would then plant four rows of squash: Squash gossip, Squash indifference, Squash grumbling and Squash selfishness. He would then plant four rows of lettuce: Lettuce be faithful and honest, Lettuce be kind, Lettuce be obedient and Lettuce really love one another. No garden would be right without turnips: Turnip for meetings,Turnip for service and Turnip to help one another. Water your garden freely with patience and cultivate it with much love. There is much fruit in your garden. But always remember you reap what you sow. To conclude your garden you must have thyme: Thyme for God and prayer, Thyme for study, work and play, Thyme for each other and Thyme for family and friends. Remember to smell the flowers along the way because we need to see the beauty that God wants to reveal to us along life's pathways. May God’s Garden continue to grow in your soul & and may your spirit of goodness always thrive as you make your journey through this sometimes short life!