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
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.
>>>Read more
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.
>>>Read more
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