Welcome

In the center of our recent ‘circle’ (Gardeners of Peace conference call, Sept. 29, 2007), we could sense a deep desire for a community of heart-centered people who are alive, awake and able to connect on an essential level, with the ‘gardener within’ and together as a developing community. It is from this ‘opened space’ that the collective wisdom, heart and spirit will continue to grow and take shape. The Garden (Gardeners of Peace) provides the 'vessel' in which this growth will emerge, expand and ultimately bear 'fruits' of all kinds, and where you are invited to reflect privately or aloud with others.

You may ask, “What is this Gardening all about, and what is in it for me?” Please realize that only you have the answer to these questions, and only you know how to contribute to make this world we live in a better place. No one among the Gardeners is here to tell you what to do.

We hope that you will find meaning in these few lines of introduction, as well as in the invitation, and that you will feel called to join us in our active search for peace, in our active gardening of our lives and of our earth. Gardening can be a very meaningful activity and a potent metaphor – and a very simple one as well. It is an activity that allows us to reach and tap our deepest identity: human beingness.
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Sunday, May 18, 2008

story practice as healing/gardening

Dear Friends,

I feel deeply grateful for the abandonment stories and questions you have shared here. It is validating for me, even comforting to give voice to this part of gardening.

Michele how you have offered your and your mother's story especially (through our email chain) affected me, reading it as I prepared to go on retreat both made me feel less alone and allowed for more of those shadow questions to come out and be seen.

As I drove down through the heart of Florida, in the northeastern Atlantic side of the state, down to the southwestern coast, I think I cried about 4 of the 5 hours of the drive, in touch with a deep and much larger than personal abandonment story. It felt true to the land herself, to the old cultures of Florida, to these strange and beautiful migrations in body and or in spirit we make in trying to connect with each other.

It is an interesting place I find myself lately. Asking for our abandonment stories to come out, to be seen, not so much so that we may wallow in our wounds and salve each other with surface compassions, but so that the secretness or the perception of isolation of these stories can meet the light, can meet each other's.

Perhaps that is what has pained me when I visit that little abandoned garden and like places, not that the abandonment has happened to whatever degree, but more that the story was is not being tended to? I don't know what to do sometimes with what I kinesthetically 'hear.' And I do believe that hearing such stories together releases something powerful of the pattern....

As I continue to ponder Gilles' and Terry's new questions -- "How do we beautify and nurture ourselves?" and "Do we have to abandon what contaminates our lives...?" -- both today are bringing me back to the healing work of storytelling and storycatching (as Christina Baldwin names it).

Listening and gently questioning the stories we tell ourselves in our inner gardening (I am not financially secure; I will be abandoned) as well as those we share and cultivate outwardly seems a critical stepping stone for our own paths and the paths in which we work to come together on.

Perhaps that is at the core of what I appreciate about the simplicity of our virtual circle calls for that reason.

I would say to Terry's question that stories of what contaminates our lives can be a great lever for not abandoning what contaminates us by inviting that shadow or toxin to be seen, heard, and come to be loved different, and this yet allows for new creation to emerge more intentionally....and so in this way story practice is one way in which we may beautify and nurture ourselves.

My time with the Art of Hosting retreat in Tampa, of which Tenneson was a part as well, confirmed the power of this for me. In releasing some of the stories I had carried, stories of Florida violences not my own that I feared had gone un-listened to, and in hearing others' stories that paralleled or coalesced with my own curious journeying was/is healing practice.

And this practice is what I am growing into as a shape for my being and doing in the world....which is fascinating because as a 'creative writer' and 'professor' I have a good deal of training in many methodologies of this and I am delighted to be letting go of making room for these practices we and like circles are discovering!

Much gratitude,
you all will be in my thoughts next Sunday though I will not be able to join the call
With heart,
Holly

Sunday, May 11, 2008

How do we beautify and nurture ourselves?

Lovely Gardeners,

How is everyone doing?

In response to Holly’s post and inquiry, I would like to make a separate entry and introduce a new theme.

Through Holly’s post, discussions I had with Lenore and Lucy, and exchange with a friend of mine in Scotland, a new theme, a new pattern of inquiry emerged in my life:

And this pattern is,

“How do we beautify and nurture ourselves?"

So that, by ripple effect, we can help others do the same – taking care of the abandoned portions of their gardens.

In terms of the tangible aspect of beautifying, my friend Maggie sent me a website link:

Guerilla Gardening

http://www.guerrillagardening.org/

This site is about people taking initiatives in their neighborhoods to ‘beautify’ a piece of land, the corner of their streets, or a park they walk through regularly. It seems to be a UK-based website but you’ll find pictures of ‘beautified gardens’ in Germany, the US and Canada – and will be amazed at the changes (they show pictures before and after the beautification).

So, then, how do we do the same in our lives? How do we beautify and nurture the garden within? This is indeed a beautiful ‘gardening inquiry.’

I don’t have any straight answer but can certainly share my own experience, having evolved and grown in a fairly hierarchical (religious) organization where I donated a good amount of time and money for the past twenty years. I am somewhat detached of this organization now, although I am still pursuing the spiritual practice that came with the organization.

At times, without this firm ground (a structure that gives you answers when you need them – you go for guidance with ‘seniors’ whenever you need it), I feel a bit like walking in water, not really knowing where the bottom is. And I am in a state of inquiry about what will come out of this new phase, out of this muddy water, a bit unsettled as I am. But aren’t we all looking for some sort, or some amount, of certainty in our lives?

Abandonment comes and goes in many ways, in many forms. One way I can relate to abandonment is through my fear of “not having enough money.” Will I become abandoned if I don’t have money? It was -and still is- huge in my mother, to the point that she never borrowed any money, and will never do. Her savings account is her psychological security blanket. In some ways, it also serves as the mother she lost 26 years ago.

I have been aware of that same fear in me for a long time and have worked on it, successfully, through my spiritual practice, to the point that I am now learning about the opposite challenge: non-possession, and how one “cleanses herself/himself” through non-possession.

Non-possession sounds like a weird idea in the world in which we live today, where many “have made the modern materialistic craze their goal.” (in Gandhi’s words).

A few paragraphs of Gandhi’s speeches have caught my attention lately (in the Chapter: The Gospel of Non-Possession).

“It is open to the world to laugh at my dispossessing myself of all property. For me, dispossession has been a positive gain. I would like people to compete with me in my contentment. It is the richest treasure I own. Hence it is perhaps right to say that, though I preach poverty, I am a rich man!”

“Civilization, in the real sense of the term, consists not in the multiplication, but in the deliberate and voluntary reduction of wants. This alone promotes real happiness and contentment, and increases the capacity for service.”

“The highest fulfillment of religion requires a giving up of all possession. Having ascertained the law of our being, we must set about reducing it to practice to the extent of our capacity and no further. That is the middle way.”

“Everyone has a right and should desire to live 125 years while performing service without an eye on result. Such life must be wholly and solely dedicated to service. Renunciation made for the sake of such service in an ineffable joy of which none can deprive one, because that nectar springs from within and sustains life. In this, there is no room for worry or impatience.”

Where does all of this take me in terms of beautifying my own garden? Honestly, I don’t know, and this is a bit of my gardening path that I wanted to share with you today on Mothers’ Day; a day of nurturance, beauty and appreciation.

The only thing I know for sure, is that there is a cosmic pattern in the way we garden ourselves, meaning that these ‘abandonment’ occurrences and this ‘beautifying’ theme did not magically coalesce into my consciousness today to create what I am writing. They were meant to happen and there are here for a reason.

Could this reason be our own evolution – our evolution as a species?

Love from the Garden Sate!

Gilles