The Well-Gardened Mind is the title of one of the most important books I have read in some time. In it Sue Stuart-Smith investigates the remarkable effects of nature on our health and wellbeing. Many people today are living in a state of disorientation from nature and from one another. We need to rediscover the practice of sitting quietly in a park, a garden, or by a window, and simply being aware of the activity of nature all around us: the changing hues of the sky, the caress of a breeze, the rustle of leaves, and the chorus of bird sounds. We become what we contemplate. When, in a garden or an allotment, we plant a seed in the ground we also plant a narrative of future possibility. Similarly, when we reach out to another person we create the possibility of exchange and sharing. We grow through one another.
Tag: garden
In the garden
In Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic The Secret Garden, little Mary, the orphan, asks her guardian if she may have a piece of earth. ‘A piece of earth?’ he queries; and she answers, ‘To plant things in, to make them grow.’ To which he replies, ‘Child, when you see a piece of earth, take it and make it come alive!’ And that is exactly what Mary, aided by Dickon and Colin, does. When they find the secret garden, they weed it and plant it. Then what do they do? They sit cross-legged and meditate!
As Rumi, the Sufi mystic, wrote:
It is when we nurture the seeds of meditation in our own inner garden that we begin to come alive at a deeper level than that of mere happiness. Happiness is elusive, it comes and goes. What grows and becomes evergreen in our innermost garden is contentment.