The Garden Within

Find a way to sit that lets your body be heavy. Feet on the ground if you can. Let your hands rest. [pause] Close your eyes, or soften them toward the floor. [pause]

Take one slow breath in through your nose… [pause] and let it go like you're fogging a window. [pause] Again. In… [pause] and out. [long pause]

This week, you're going to hear us talk about your life as a garden. Not because it's a pretty picture. Because it's accurate. Every living thing you care about — your body, your marriage, your work, your faith, your joy — it all grows in soil. And soil doesn't lie. [pause] Whatever is planted in it, whatever is buried in it, whatever is draining it — the garden tells the truth about all of it, eventually. [long pause]

So come see it. [pause] In your mind, walk to the edge of a piece of ground and know: this one is yours. However it looks right now — wild, dry, overgrown, or better than you feared — it's yours, and no one else can tend it for you. [long pause]

Now kneel down at the edge of it. [pause] And find, somewhere in that ground, one small green shoot. New. Alive. Barely started. [pause] That shoot is the thing you came here hoping for. The life you described when you set your intention in the car. It's already planted. It's already growing. That's worth knowing: you didn't come here to start something. You came here to clear the way for something that has already started. [long pause]

But look around the shoot now. [pause] Look at what else is growing in that soil. There are weeds in every garden, and there are weeds in you — and here's the thing about weeds: they don't announce themselves. Some of them flower. Some of them have been there so long they look like they belong. [pause]

The voice that says you're behind. [pause] The one that says you're too much, or not enough, or who do you think you are. [pause] The story you tell about yourself in the ten seconds after a mistake. [pause] You know the voice. You've heard it so long it sounds like your own. [long pause]

You don't have to pull anything yet. Today, just walk the rows. [pause] Name what you see. Where did that weed come from? Who planted it? How long has it been feeding on ground that was meant for the shoot? [long pause]

— silence —

Here's the last thing, and then we'll come back. [pause] A weed is not a verdict. Every gardener on earth has weeds — the difference between a garden that flourishes and one that fails isn't the presence of weeds. It's whether anyone is tending it. [pause] As of this morning, someone is tending yours. [long pause]

Come back to your breath. [pause] Feel your feet. [pause] Wiggle your fingers. [pause] And when you're ready, open your eyes. [pause] Your journal is next. Write down the weeds you saw — their actual words. We'll know what to do with them by Friday.