Week One: Day 5 – The Garden of Your Life

In this series we are growing a Rule of Life, using gardening as our primary metaphor. What is it like to garden, to plant something? Imagine you are planting flowers or vegetables, something you planted last year or perhaps something new. Where are you planting? How much space do you have – a full yard or maybe you are in an apartment? What is the climate you are in, what is the season, what can grow where you are now? Then once you do plant, how do you help things grow? What do they need to survive – water, nutrients, sunlight? How do you protect what you have planted, perhaps with a fence? Perhaps things need to be cut back at times, pruned, in order to produce fruit. And then you get to enjoy and harvest and look forward to sustained further growth for next time.

Here as we consider Rule of Life we are looking at practices – what’s most important to us and how to plant them and help them grow. So what is a life practice you want to include? You may have many you want, but what space do you have and what climate or season are you in? Then what does it take to help nurture that? What will feed your practice and what boundaries do you need to put in place in order to actually grow? What must be let go of or cut back in order to produce fruit? Then how do you enjoy and how do you also sustain and consider what you might plan next?

– Br. Luke Ditewig

Question to Journal
In the garden of your life, what is thriving and what is not?