Flowering Rain Garden Today

In the 19th century book Way of a Pilgrim the anonymous Russian author sets out on a pilgrimage to find out how to “pray unceasingly” as St. Paul exhorts the early Christians to do in one of his letters. The pilgrim eventually discovers the Jesus Prayer, a brief repetitious prayer that becomes a prayer of the heart. Sometimes it is called the “Unceasing Prayer”, allowing one to pray with the heart with each breathe at all times. Many religions have some form of ritualistic repetitive prayers like the Catholics with the rosary. Also forms of meditation, like Transcendental Meditation use a word or phrase to focus one’s attention to reach a deep silence of mind and body.

Picking flowers from my rain garden in the front lawn today I realized that the rain garden flowers unceasingly, from early spring with the tulips to late fall with the mums. Actually all the plants in the rain garden are perennials so they never die completely; they just do not flower in the cold months in Wisconsin.

Flowering Rain Garden Today

When I was a young adult I was fascinated by the “Jesus Prayer”, which I first heard about in a Salinger novel Fanny and Zoey. I tried practicing it for awhile and it worked. Unfortunately I was not disciplined enough to keep it going, but once in awhile when things get stressful I will reach for my prayer beads and say the Jesus Prayer.

I have been thinking recently about how to be kind and gentle to persons I disagree with, especially if they are persons who claim to share the same values and beliefs. To struggle for one’s vision of truth, even to the point of sacrifice but without fighting is difficult.

The observation about the rain garden’s unceasing flowering gives me a hint of how to accomplish this way of being, struggling for truth but not fighting. If our life can be like plants in the rain garden, unceasingly flowering, in sunny days and dark rainy days, it will make life more bright and the struggle and sacrifice easier. Like the Jesus prayer we need to repeat this exercise of “unceasing flowering” so it becomes a way of our heart.

Comments

(:commentboxchrono:)