As you visit a park, your home or business or backyard patio, an upstairs balcony, an arboretum, a museum or corporate garden, please consider the value of an informal contemplative prayer to your life, as described in Sometimes, Enough is Enough ( Harper Collins, 2000):
That naturalist-'monk' (and, to me, casual contemplative) John Muir considered Nature his good mother who "sees well to the clothing of her many bairnes.' Saint Francis viewed Nature as his sister, and 'even a younger sister: a little, dancing sister.' Either way, mother or sister, father or friend, it's clear that Nature is good medicine for a contemplative's heart, as Saint Bernard of Clairvaux wrote in his 106th Epistle: 'We'll find something more in woods than in our books. Trees and stones teach us what we can never learn from masters.'
Thus it comes to pass that now each dawn [some of us] rise to greet the unspoiled day in wonder.[If we live] near a rural expanse ... [we'll] see miracles in the prosaic: in yellow buds and chartreuse tree frogs the size of your pinkie and in shades of sunlight streaming through the pines. Keep in mind, I am a lowbrow. As such, I impress easily... (p. 22)
(Quoted passages cited in original text, and include: P, Browning, ed, John Muir, Great West Books; G.K.Chesterton, Orthodoxy.)
[Welcome!] Welcome to our healing garden. For now-- a virtual, meditative site, that invites you to mull over calming -- healing -- ideas while you "stroll" about. Eventually, as noted elsewhere on our site we hope to create an actual (physical) site where, in a garden sanctuary, we might easily talk about life and amble around in the sunshine with our visitors!
Just as God rested after he had created the original Garden, so too are we often comforted in our own sacred garden. Any aesthetic, natural space can lead us into the meditative, grateful harmony of the soul at rest. In fact, everything good has been created expressly for our joy.
[On Wholeness & Gardens] Gardens play an important role in the Bible, for example the Garden of Eden marks humankind's birthplace. Spiritually speaking, at our very ground of being, and before the beginning, we are at one with Beauty.
The Garden of Gethsemane was where Jesus of Nazareth chose to stroll with his disciples over a brook and pray (Jn. 18:1). And as Jesus led his disciples to pray in secret, in stillness and privacy, so a sacred spot can lead us into deep devotion, the innocent acknowledgment of beauty and, ultimately, into healing -- wholeness, holiness, full and integration -- that state wherein we feel...
"Ah, nothing is missing. I feel profoundly complete despite what seems to be at odds in my usual life, I feel profoundly and surprisingly complete. I lack nothing and "behold, everything is very good."We welcome your thoughts on Sometimes, Enough is Enough or our latest, Don't Call Me Old. (But before writing, please see Q & A guidelines, which apply to all e-correspondences.)
We leave you with The Center's bias of the month...
"A garden made sacred is a holy, healing space."