Tending the Soil of the Psyche

April 27th, 2024 | Click to Comment

This week I cleaned up the garden bed, neglected since last fall when I managed only to stack the tomato cages and drag away the spent vines. The winter’s brief deep freeze took the rosemary, leaving a dry and brittle carcass to dig out of the ground. The newly green thyme and mint looked healthy, and I was careful to work around it. I pulled fragrant wild onion, hoed up violets and clover, raked out and removed grasses and vines. With an entire bed of turned soil exposed to the sun, a new wave of weedlings will no doubt sprout soon.

It can be a pleasure to work in the spring garden, but something cast a shadow over that effort. Even as I was accomplishing what needed to be done, I noticed the familiar voice of my inner critic. The critic didn’t give me credit for the work I was doing. Instead, it kept pointing out that I should have accomplished this task months ago.

Just like the untended garden bed, the soil of my psyche yields its own unwelcome perennials. There is always an interior voice, critical and judgmental, that insists I should do more and be better. I’ve learned that what needs tending, just like a garden bed, is my inner landscape with its unrelenting inner critic. That’s who was judging me for being late to the task.

That inner critic would easily drain all the joy and satisfaction out of accomplishing the job, if I allowed it. The inner critic has no capacity to enjoy the day or to celebrate what has been completed. It can see only that the work should have been done already, and that there is more to do. In matters large and small, the critical inner voice is capable of acknowledging only the ways we fall short.

If we’re fortunate, at some point we realize that the inner critic does not know how to embrace life. It insists we work harder to be good enough, but never allows us to claim that blessed state. The demands of the inner critic are discouraging, not life-giving. It’s not helpful to chastise myself even as I’m working on what needs tending—whether it’s my garden or my life. If that’s how it has to be, no wonder I put off getting started.

There is much left to do in the yard, chores that might have been done a month ago if I had spent more time at home or worked a little harder when I was. But I want my work outdoors in the Kentucky springtime to be a pleasure as I pull weeds and set new plants. To have any chance of enjoying the garden, I need to be ready for that critical voice.

I’ll probably never be rid of it, but I don’t have to let that voice take charge. I can invite the inner critic to sit on the ground next to me. After all, she truly believes that she’s helping me to be good, to be worthy, to be safe from the criticism of others, and deserving of a place to belong. She believes it’s all up to her to see that I earn my place in the world. She has helped me to accomplish many things, but she can’t take in the beauty of life just as it is. She can’t experience love because she’s so busy trying to be worthy of it.

Whether tending a garden or tending the soul, it’s necessary to pay attention to what’s coming up. Weeding and cultivating both our inner and outer lives teaches us about ourselves and about the world. It creates a space where goodness can grow and flourish. It brings healing and abundance, allowing us to live more fully and become more whole.

As we learn to pay attention in this way, we begin to see more clearly. We’re better able to respond with what is needed. Of course, this takes time. It happens slowly as our lives unfold. It doesn’t mean we’re late. There is nothing to be gained from berating ourselves for not having come to it sooner.

Jesus offered a parable (Matthew 20:1-16) in which the workers who showed up to the vineyard late in the day were paid the same as those who had labored since morning. The same pay, whether for eight hours or for one? It doesn’t make sense. The part of me that tries hard to do right and wants the reward I’ve earned stands with those in the story who worked all day. “That’s not fair!” they protest, and I see their point.

But the point of the story is not that we are hard workers being taken advantage of. Rather, we are the ones showing up late in the day. It takes most of us a long time to arrive at the beautiful truth of who we are and what life is about. The part of me that feels aggrieved by how the workers are paid is aligned with the inner critic, passing judgment for being late—whether in getting a task done or in cultivating the life of the spirit.

Most of us show up for spiritual work when much of the day is spent, and Jesus taught that we’re not late. Making space for something beautiful and life-giving to grow from our little plot of earth is something to celebrate, no matter when it happens. We are welcomed and rewarded with fullness of life whenever we arrive.  

Susan Christerson Brown

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Awakening

March 31st, 2021 | Click to Comment

First thing this morning, there was a list running in my head of tasks that needed attention right away, or so I believed. I made my way to the kitchen in robe and slippers, reaching automatically to switch off the lamppost out front. The inner productivity police were telling me I was already behind—not a very kind or peaceful way to begin the day.

But outside the window, past the lamppost, my neighbor’s saucer magnolia was in full bloom. Lit by the rising sun, branches and blooms leaning languidly over the drive, the tree’s abundant flowers spilled onto the ground below. The sight lifted me above the weary trails in my mind, and awakened me to the beauty of the morning.

That tree hadn’t worried as it weathered the winter; it didn’t fret about whether it would bloom. It didn’t resist coming to life in the early spring. It didn’t tell itself that opening its buds was too hard, or question its own timing when the days turned warmer. It didn’t judge the number of blossoms on its branches, or their color and size.

Instead, it simply allowed the sap to rise and the buds to form and the sun to invite them to open. It didn’t “do” anything. It certainly didn’t force anything. It allowed life and the season to flow through it.

And today, that beautiful magnolia invited me to do the same.

May it be so.

Susan Christerson Brown

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Lining the Shelves

July 27th, 2018 | Click to Comment

The timing of a move this summer gave me a few days to ready the space before I moved into my new home. It was a chance to get to know the house itself, uncluttered with furniture or boxes, seeing how the light filled the rooms and changed throughout the day. I played a radio that echoed through the empty spaces while I prepared for my things to arrive.

One task was to put down clean shelf paper in the kitchen cabinets and drawers. Even before the boxes were moved in I was eager to get them unpacked and organized into a working kitchen, so I wanted all of the shelves ready to hold the things I needed.

It took forever, or at least it seemed to. Cutting the liner to the right dimensions made me aware of every inch of storage behind cabinet doors and drawer fronts. I allocated an evening for the job, but at the end of the evening I was so far from finished that I questioned the value of the whole enterprise. What had seemed like a good idea turned out to be more of an investment than I realized. But the shelves I had lined were clean and inviting, and I wanted all of them to feel that way. So I kept going.

The payoff showed up when I was unpacking boxes and working to put things in order. With that basic, foundational work done, the shelves were ready to hold what was needed.

Foundational work of any kind takes longer than we think. We underestimate what’s required to do it properly because in daily life the foundations aren’t obvious. Once the dishes are put away the shelf paper is practically invisible—unless it’s done badly, in which case it’s a continual vexation.

In spiritual life, the foundation is laid by cultivating the ability to be fully present and fully aware. It’s not until we’re able to notice what’s happening inside ourselves—our mental habits, our emotional patterns, our places of physical tension—that we become able to see clearly what’s going on in the world around us.

That practice of being present, of being awake and aware, is how we become receptive to the divine force that holds and guides us through life. Being present is how we become more loving; we can only love when we actually show up in this moment.

It’s easy to convince myself that I’m truly here because my body is. But my mind and heart go off on their own, wandering the same old paths, and lose connection with the body. If I’m not settled enough to feel my feet on the floor and the breath expanding my chest and belly, then I’m probably running my habitual patterns inside instead of truly showing up here and now. Not being in the body is a good clue that I’m not receptive to what life is offering right now.

Cultivating this practice takes even longer than putting down shelf liner. Preparing ourselves to receive the contents of whatever new box the day unpacks is the work of a lifetime. Yet when we are prepared to receive what comes, we’re better able to respond in freedom instead of from reflex. We’re more able to act from a place of love. The practice of mindfulness and meditation is something like laying down a clean lining for the shelving in our minds and hearts, and being conscious of what we will store there.

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The Work in Front of You

February 4th, 2011 | 5 Comments

I like what Karen Maezen Miller says about work in her memoir, Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life.

“Accord yourself with what needs to be done—the very thing that appears before you. What appears before you is not only the most important thing; it is the only thing, all other things existing in your imagination, for the time being.”

Miller is both a suburban mom and a Zen Buddhist priest, a combination of roles that seems particularly apt to me. When she talks about the work in front of her, she often means the same work that confronts me: piles of laundry and a kitchen to clean. Work that an unenlightened being on a bad day might consider drudgery.

Yet I know enough to recognize the wisdom in her teaching. I know that the dread I feel when the insurance company demands documentation is far worse than the effort of retrieving those papers from the files. I know that the frustration of cluttered counters and closets is far more painful than actually clearing them.

The problem is that I have better things to do with my time, or at least I think I do. I have more creative pursuits to follow, more important work to accomplish. I have a more fulfilling life to live than the messy one in front of me with all of its exasperating details.

On the other hand, sometimes the work in front of me is more complicated. That work may be the next step to take toward a larger goal. Often the problem that arises then is that I don’t know how to do it. Which means the additional task of learning to take on something I haven’t done before. There’s no ease with that, no sense of mastery. It would be so much more comfortable to just do what I’m good at.

I can avoid the big scary projects for a while, immersing myself in other things. But no one moves forward that way. And eventually all other endeavors lose their flavor if I’m not doing the work that calls to me. At the same time, it’s hard to do that higher level work when I’m tripping over the shoes and magazines piled on the floor.

So the work in front of me may be a sink full of dishes, or it may be the next step in making a dream come true. Both matter. Sometimes I experience a day in which each kind of work is a welcome respite from the other, a day in which I can gladly take on what’s in front of me without feeling I should be doing something different. When I can bring that kind of presence to my working, I’m released from the draining effects of second-guessing and doubt. What I’m doing is the right thing, and it’s all that matters.

As Miller says, “At the moment when I’m in the muck, at the moment when I’m doing anything, it is my life, it is all of time, and it is all of me.”

What work is in front of you?

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