Weeding the Garden and the Stream of Life.

WARNING: STRONG USE OF METAPHORS AHEAD!!!

When I was in college I wrote a short note on my theory of life.

I wrote that life was like a stream, every flowing, every changing, and we are but a leaf on this stream,

flowing along, 

every once in awhile we rest on a bank,

 only to be swept into the current again and headed on our way,

Along this stream of life, we encounter many others, other leaves such as ourselves, or those logs, rocks twigs, waterfalls

 obstacles, voyages, adventures..., 

These obstacles shape us.. literally, they either tear holes in us or they make us stronger for surviving..

The cycle repeats itself until we reach our ultimate and final destination... and whatever else survived the journey, we can only hope to be reunited with, in the "great pond" 

Over the Years the metaphor has changed, Often times I am convinced Life is more Like a Garden; 

we are a flower in this garden.

The More Our garden is watered, with love, the stronger we grow

 We are all start out as seeds, planted in this great garden together, some are already grown when we enter the earth, others we grow with, we only come to know the true colors, (literally and figuratively in this sense) and natures of these co-flowers... some come in the form of flowers but turn out to be weeds.. over time we realize their true natures and we have to pluck them out, 

 They will only wilt you, you won't be able to stand strong, and bring your beauty to the world with these sorts of people in your garden...

But your roots are wrapped in theirs.. a
nd when they are picked, it hurts..
 Every.. time..
sometimes the weeds weed themselves out,
 that hurts the worst.
It's done with the  most blunt of force and tears a rip in your core...
 you don't bloom as bright for awhile,
 but after more water and sunshine you shine bright again,
and the cycle continues..

BUT THEN AGAIN..

Maybe we don't start out in the garden..
 maybe we are just planted and have to grow our own community around us,
 our own garden,
 we have to commune with the wildlife around us,
to help spread our seed,
to commune with neighboring flowers,

.. or maybe we are just lone flowers, 

 surviving in-spite of all obstacles..

 our friends are the eco system around us..

some help us to pollinate .

. and each time they come and go they take a piece of you with them

Some are Butterflies, 

gentle, happy, strong in character;

 they have overcome so much to blossom into what they are now.. their metamorphosis inspires you, they give you hopes and dreams to stew in, as you grow

Others are  Bees:

Hard working, social creatures, complacent, forward thinking, they help the world grow, but only for a moment, they are loyal but can still sting you... leaving a hole in your heart after they proverbially weed themselves out.

the weather also shapes us, we encounter storms, days of great sunshine, and both the water and the sun nourish us, just as the good and bad seasons of our life also shape us..

I have been thinking a lot about the relationships I have lost over the years, some of these relationships that ended were other seeds I was planted with.. WE grew together for a time, but we only knew each other superficially, as children..

 over time I grew, 

they grew,

 we didn't know the species of the other,  

time would reveal if we could co-exist peacefully. 

 Could we share soil? 

could we nurture each other?

 lift each other up? 

or suffocate each other's roots?

 wear each other down?

and as it turns out some species of flowers do not survive well with others...

I learned that the amount of time you know someone does not mark the strength of a relationship.. especially if you never took the chance to get to know each other's hearts... 

But the good news is, we are not confined to the ground we start out in.. we can uproot ourselves, start again, grow a new garden, each garden we visit, we live and we learn, what works, what doesn't, we carry our findings with us in the form of wisdom and each garden we grow is stronger than the last until finally we are in Eden again.. 

Life is full of Joy and Sorrow, Obstacles, and Trials. WE shape ourselves and the environment around us, we have the power to change, and grow, and bloom, wherever we are planted.. 

But Most importantly;

Love on Another.

Life is Short.

Make it Beautiful.

Of Love and Life and Sedimentary Rocks

Lately I seem to be looking at life through this new lens... perhaps it's rose colored glasses, or maybe it's something else... something divine and unknown... But I seem to be finding the symbolism and metaphorical value in everything... Perhaps that doesn't make entirely too much sense but I am starting to see things in a new light and it's very aesthetic..

I will try to explain..

As an ENFP (my score in the meyers-briggs personality examination) I am a people driven person.. I am the "Inspirer" I look for what makes people tick in their best way and I try to feed that part of them... "Try" being the operative word..

I have this friend who really likes rocks.. I have known him for almost a year and this is a part of him I have only recently come to learn about him... he likes rocks.. of all things rocks... he's not alone because there are paleontologists and archaeologists and all sorts of interesting people who really get their thrills from rocks.. AND  I do not fit into any of the above categories of people.. so to me rocks are just that.. "rocks"

 never really thought about them beyond that..

But I started to listen as he described each rock, how they were formed, how they were different.. he asked questions I asked questions, he took a book out.. an "encyclopedia" of rocks so to speak,  he started to look up different terms and types and I watched a spark glow in him..

I asked him what it was about rocks that appealed to him... he did not know.. (yea color me disappointed) but then I realized to myself, that perhaps he knew the answer and maybe it was too revealing of himself to share..
often times the most intimate and quirky parts of ourselves, are often the deepest and hardest to share with others..
Or perhaps he really didn't know and  that should be sufficient..
who knows why certain things are imbedded within us??

I accepted that I didn't need to know.. .. That I knew that they brought joy to this man's life and that's all that needed to matter.

I was reminded of that excerpt in "Blue Like Jazz" by Donald Miller:

"“I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.

After that I liked jazz music.

Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way."

  Earlier during this visit with my friend he showed me to this bucket he had that a friend had given him of mostly sediment.. and crumbles of rocks..Within all the rubble however were fragments of Crystals/gems.... He told me that they had this hippie juju that cleared the air of bad forces or something like that.. but I was more interested in the aesthetic value of them..

I liked the fact that you could dig in all this seemingly impenetrable rubble and find these treasures.. it made me think of the human race as a whole... How we are minuscule cells in the largest scheme of things.. and I wondered,

What if we are gems buried in rubble??..

what if we have value and haven't dug deep enough to find it..?

what if we are constantly searching.. wishing we were the gem that stood out amidst all the grime and brokenness.. but all along we were?

My friend wanted to find the top of a crystal, he said they were very beautiful but they were broken.. to me they were all beautiful, even the broken ones..but he was determined to find one that was

 pure, unbroken, unclouded.. 

he wanted the one without flaws.. that one would stand out...

After some searching..I found one that met his criteria, but even then it just existed in the sea of all the others...

and again I started thinking:

What if WE are reaching for an unattainable standard?
What if WE hold this bar of perfection to obtain for ourselves that is simply impossible to reach?
What would we do if we reached it?
Would we be content..?
Why can't we complacent with not being perfect.. ?
Why can't we see that all the crystals and gems and rocks are beautiful IN their brokenness??
And if we did realize that...what then??

I am one that strongly believes that we are all here for a reason.. we are all connected, spiritually, physically, mentally... emotionally, physiologically, we are one.. ALL of us. WE make up the body of something bigger we are cells of the divine and we have the divine in us..

"Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many.

 Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.  And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body.  If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?  But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be." - 1 Corinthians 12: 12-18

We are all part of something bigger than ourselves and yet we are all constantly searching to obtain that unattainable standard of living; All striving to be the one that stands out, to be something special, recognized, to be exhorted, lifted up, appreciated, treasured, respected, valuable... WHEN...

WE ALREADY ARE.

This same friend wanted to show me this book of Chinese Proverbs he had that was over 100 years old.. As I began to read.. One of them really stood out.

"Something mysteriously formed,

before heaven and earth

in the silence and the void,

standing alone and unchanging,

every present and in motion.

Perhaps it is the mother of 10,000 things

I do not know it's name,

call it Tao

For Lack of a better word, I call it great.

Being Great, it flows.

It flows far away.

Having gone far, it returns.

Therefore, "Tao is Great;

Heaven is great; Earth is Great; the Human being is also great."

These are the four great powers of the Universe

And the human being is one of them.

The human being follows the earth.

Earth follows heaven.

Heaven follows Tao

Tao follows what is natural.

Knowing in my heart of hearts that this Tao is the great creator, Father of the Universe and all mankind.. I can attest that He is Great.. and He made us in His Image and therefore by Default.. We are Great too.

"They are Beautiful, but they are all broken"

When are we (myself included) going to look at ourselves and this Universe through the eyes of the creator who made us all?
 Whom when he was done creating the Universe and all in it He stood back and said 'this is "GOOD"..' ??

WE are Good

We are Loved, We are treasured. we ARE valuable, We ARE enough.

I confess that I am often times guilty of that "grass is greener" mentality,

If I only looked like this I would be happy
If I only weighed this much I would be happy
If my Marriage had more or less of this I would be happy
If I had more friends I would be happy
If I had more followers on my blog I would be happy
If I have reached this amount of success I would be happy
If this many people loved me I would be happy
IF__________________________________________ (Fill in the blank)

There is this insatiable desire that lives within all of us that can only be filled with ONE THING.. and that "one thing" should be the goal that we are trying to achieve; and that is
The knowledge of our creator.

He knows us more than we will ever know ourselves, He holds our identity, Our purpose, Our hearts, Our Desires.. He created it all and only He has the answers.. Only He can give us what we Need.. Only He knows what that Is...

WE are all Broken.. 

WE are all Beautiful.

There is so much beauty, and happiness and joy on this broken planet.. we need to search through the rubble together as a race; the Human Race to seek and find what makes this whole silly thing called life worth while..

Being someone who suffers from pretty severe depression I am constantly looking at the darker parts of life and wondering "why?" just that.. "WHY?"
I need to shift my paradigm.
I need to look to the beauty, the light, the TRUTH.
I have the power to choose happiness over sadness.
I have the power to choose beauty where there may be believed to be "ugliness"

My mother used to have this book "1000 reasons to be happy" that she had in her bathroom.. I would pick it up and read it from time to time It said things like "puppies' pink noses" "the smell of a freshly mowed lawn" "banana splits" "Baby's laughter" etc... and it was cute and all, but I don't think I really understood the purpose of that book until now..

Our visions have become so polluted; Our perceptions are so faded that the beauty and the joy that is right in front of us often times get missed..
if we focused on those small  seemingly mundane details more often and saw the beauty therein we would naturally be happier..

  My mother was also the one who taught me to see the beauty in everyone.. I once made the mistake of mentioning out loud that I thought a person who was not (by societal standards) deem-able as "beautiful" that I also believed them to be "Ugly"

It was in that moment that my mom changed my eyes to see the beauty in that person, I don't know how she achieved that but ever since then I try to see beyond the surface of every person I meet.
I want to fall in love with their hearts; to see what makes them THEM and what  is unique about them that makes them beautiful.. and in my 28 years of findings I have come to the conclusion:

We are all extraordinary!

I doubt any of your read this.. but if you do.. near and far, known or unknown.. if we share this planet together.. I love you.

We are in this together.. and..

WE ARE GREAT!