THE GARDEN To help understand meaningful relationships, let us look at
a specific example. A garden. Caring for a garden provides the opportunity for us to express
our Inner Self through the mental, physical and emotional components of our being. A garden can also provide
an opportunity to share the process in a sustaining relationship with others.
Let us first look at the individual relationship with the
garden, and at the contribution of each component of our being. The garden does not judge us. It is a safe
place to share our being, to experience ourselves. With our mind we study and understand; with our body we act; and with our
emotions we sense and experience deeper relationship.
Our experience with the garden gives us a chance to allow our Inner Selves to express
through each component of us. To do so with each part in balance will allow us to experience wholeness and this will be reflected
to us by the wholeness of the garden.
The confidence we gain can help us if we establish a sustaining relationship to care
for a garden with another. Such a relationship will provide an opportunity to share our mental, physical, and emotional components
with each other and in the process learn with and from each other. The garden becomes a reflection of our relationship. Our
gardens, our homes, and our communities are all reflections of our wholeness and the wholeness of our relationships.
Let us look at the garden from a different viewpoint. It will help
us understand what happens to society when meaningful relationships break down.
A couple own a garden, a harmonious garden with grass, trees,
fruit, flowers, and vegetables. They love working together in the garden and care for it. They enjoy the
shadow of its trees in summer, its fruit, the fresh vegetables, the feel of the grass, the smell of the flowers. Many times
they take a break from tending the garden and they talk and walk and share many things in the garden. One day the relationship
breaks down. She leaves and he is left alone with the garden. He still uses the garden but doesn't tend it. It was working
together and sharing which really mattered. Soon the garden is depleted, the flowers, the fruit, the vegetables, all gone.
It is a garden of weeds. The earth is the total of all our gardens, its weeds are our ignorance. Its beauty can reflect the
wholeness in our relationships.
