To Live in the Garden

For three years recently I wrote a series of meditations and published them to share with a faith community where I attend on occasion.  The series, "Garden In The Desert," is progressive from the idea we might be lovable and beautiful to the final acceptance of that reality and one's individual choice to live the reality and to experience the unity with eternal, unconditional Love.  Following is the introduction to the final series.

There is a truth upon which our very existence rests.  To recognize that truth is to know and integrate this reality:  each of us is truly beautiful, completely lovable and forever acceptable.  This recognition brings us to the verge of a garden growing in the midst of the barrenness of the desert life so often can be.  As we stand at the edge of more beauty than our eyes can fathom we hear the gentle music of a bubbling fountain.  From it comes a clear, flowing stream.

What is this truth?  What creates this garden?  From where does the water flow?  To what mysteriously magnificent place have we come in our longing search for a peaceful place to rest our weary spirits?  Is it remotely possible we have found our souls' inmost desire, that place where we know we belong?  Everything here seems to welcome us.  Yet, this is a most unusual place, unexpected, even as we dimly recognize it as home.

The garden in the desert, this place we have visited, walking the paths and exploring its sometimes hidden places, is the reality of who we are.  The flowing, singing fountain of clear water is Living Water, the Christ mind of love and compassion, acceptance without question feeding our weary spirits and refreshing our souls.  We have come here and now we begin to hope it truly is our souls' home.

Too often we have visited and withdrawn back into the desert of our daily lives, uncertain of the reality of a place so beautiful, so accepting.  We hesitate to think a love so unconditional includes each of us.  We are conditioned throughout our lives by the society in which we live to believe we must earn our places.  We hesitate at the verge, hearing the assurance of our belovedness in the music of the water, yet afraid to believe it is assurance meant for us.  What is the catch?  What must we accomplish to deserve unconditional love and acceptance?  How can we ever be good enough for such a beautiful place?

We seem to stand at the edge of a great chasm.  We see and, deep within our hesitant spirits, we recognize where our longing has led us.  We have discovered, through the long trek across the desert of our lives, a place where we hear clearly, "I have loved with with an everlasting love.  I have named you.  I have called you.  You are mine."  These awesome words have revealed the wonder of our spirits and we have found the garden of our own beauty.  Still, we cannot seem to step across the verge, to choose to stay in the presence of such enduring love and acceptance.  We can choose to accept this opportunity, to step across the chasm of fear and to choose to live in the garden created from Love, by whatever name we call the Sacred Reality.  Herein is the invitation to make that last step from our personal deserts.  The garden will remain, always available and forever beautiful, for it is the core of our very being awaiting our individual decisions to discover the love who lives with and within each of us.

Perhaps, when each of us chooses to make that one step across the chasm, that terrible, yawning great gulf between where we stand and where we want to be, we each will realize something unique and wonderful.  We will discover faith.  We each will realize our one step of faith into what we believe is that huge empty space between our deserts and the garden will result in one of two events.  Either that one step will be onto solid ground within the garden, or we will learn to fly, sending each of us soaring over the chasm at our feet into the garden.  One way or the other, we each will reach the garden.

Choosing to live in this garden, the reality of the Sacred, enduring love, will change our lives.  To accept such love is to see with new eyes and to hear with new ears.  While we may wander close to the desert again and again, never will we wander more than to the edge.  The reality of the Sacred's love and of our own beloved place in Divine life will return us to the fountain of living water, to the mind of Christ, our brother, one of those who has shown the path to this garden.

(c) Spirit Eagle  2005