Growing your Soul

The Garden of your Soul


Every spring, I enjoy a garden full of flowers--hyacinths, daffodils, dutch iris--but the tulips are the best!  I am sad to see them go, but their departure means it is time to lay in the longer summer garden of fresh flowers coloring the front of the house.

We never miss the first and most important step--several new bags of garden soil.  We mix it in deeply, throughout, because the secret of the flowers is always the soil and its nutrients.  Lacking that--forget it!  Try planting in a pile of rocks--and you won't even get a rock garden.

That sounds all too obvious--but then again, I have to recall painfully the times that I planted seeds for my own growth in the equivalent of a pile of rocks expecting them to grow.  Personal intentions for growth need the same discipline as a good garden!  Prepare and care for the soil--or should I say SOUL? 

A rule of life is what good soil is to the garden.  It keeps the soul nourished, fed with life-giving things--and seeds that are planted -- can truly grow.  The rule of life is a disciplined life for the spirit.  You commit to some form of daily scripture reading, prayer and always a journal to look back on your soul.  It always begins with the question, "And how is it with my soul?" The answer is always the same--"I give it to God each day with the prayer that he nourishes it for growth in spiritual maturity--for growth in God."  Some people choose to work with a spiritual director who helps the person with the disciplined life of growth.

Is The Parable of the Sower

REALLY 

The Parable of the Soul? 

Listen! A sower went out to sow. ⁴And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. ⁵Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. ⁶And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. ⁷Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. ⁸Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.’ ⁹And he said, ‘Let anyone with ears to hear listen!’