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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The Upheaval of Early Spring

April 17th, 2011 | 6 Comments

It’s been a volatile early Spring this year. Every time I relax into believing the growing warmth has arrived for good, chill winds argue otherwise. It’s a changeable, unsettling season. Daffodils wilt in the cold, pansies wither in the heat, followed by days of cold rain and dreariness. Meanwhile, storms are tearing across the country—150 tornadoes just in the past three days. The transition from Winter toward Summer is wrenching, unpredictable, as transitions can often be.

Spring brings more than a season’s worth of change, it seems. A couple of calendars I’ve come across lay out the year in six seasons, rather than four, which makes a lot of sense to me.

J.R.R. Tolkien gave the elves in his Lord of the Rings trilogy six seasons. He added a season called Ending of Summer, and one in early Spring called Stirring, which I think is a perfect name.

Naturalists studying the Melbourne, Australia area propose six or even seven seasons. They’re represented here on a beautifully drawn wheel. Some divide what we call Spring into Pre-spring or Early Spring and True Spring, and divide Summer into High Summer and Late Summer. Others retain Summer and divide winter into Early Winter and Deep Winter.

The Hindu calendar also includes six seasons—Monsoon comes after Summer, and Prewinter follows Autumn.

Dividing the year into sixths feels quite different from our usual division into quarters. Four is solid and stable—the four sides of a square, four points of a compass, four legs of a table. It feels complete and unmoving.

Representations of six have a different sense—a pie cut in six wedges, a six-pointed star, a wheel with six spokes. These are images that suggest motion. The eye continually travels around them, which is appropriate for representing the cyclical nature of the earth and the seasons.

The continuing cycle represents our own growth as we persevere through our lives, gathering energy for many buds and blooms, yielding multiple harvests, and accepting the end of countless growing seasons.

As regular as the seasons are, they are ever fluid, moving toward the next thing. They never rest in the sense of having arrived. What appears to us as the fullness of any season is simply the momentary place that the continual motion has brought about.

Early Spring is a reminder of this. There is always this much going on; upheaval is always happening. This time of year it’s just easier to see.

What kind of transition is Spring bringing for you this year?

Comments (6) | Seasons Tags: , ,

Breakfast Stirrings

February 17th, 2011 | 4 Comments

Most mornings this winter I’ve enjoyed oatmeal for breakfast. The kind that cooks on the stove is worth the effort for me, even though it means an extra pot to wash. Served warm with dried cranberries and a little brown sugar, a few chopped walnuts stirred in, it’s a healthy and comforting brace against a cold morning.

But with the welcome respite we’re having from winter in Central Kentucky right now, I can hardly bear the thought of another bowl of oatmeal. All winter I’ve loved it; now I’m sick of it. Maybe it’s really cold weather I’m weary of, but the guilt by association persists.

Poor oatmeal. A steady companion all these bleak months and now I don’t want it in my sight. Don’t need that remnant of the winter doldrums. It’s hardly fair. I just opened a tall new cylindrical box and it may be next winter before I finish it.

Fresh fruit! Whole wheat toast! Even cold cereal sounds better. Yogurt! Or smoothies! So many possibilities on a sunny spring-like morning. It’s spring fever at the breakfast table.

If the pangs over ignoring my faithful oats grow unbearable, I’ll make them into cookies.

What kind of change are you looking for?

Comments (4) | Seasons Tags: , , ,

Meeting Beauty Halfway

April 16th, 2010 | 2 Comments

It doesn’t seem hard to find beauty in springtime. The world is woozy with blossom-scented air; flowering branches shower the earth with petals. The breeze carries birdsong and life is abundant again.

But I keep thinking about your thoughtful responses to my previous post. The insights there remind me that it’s a gift to be able to appreciate these things, and that there have been times when the capacity to enjoy them has been beyond me.

I know what it’s like to miss out on spring, worried about something going on, or not going on, in my life, or even how I’ll look in summer clothes. Being blinded by those concerns, large or small, is a kind of imprisonment. Life can be hard, and even harder when the restorative experience of beauty is beyond our reach. The view is oppressive when we can’t see past ourselves.

It’s good to do what we can to be open to beauty, to try to meet it halfway. But when our own efforts aren’t enough to haul us out of a dark place, the possibility remains of being seized by something beautiful. It can break through walls we didn’t realize were there, and reveal something wonderful about this world. Beauty seeks us out, calls to something within us, urging us to open our eyes and see.

When I watch the light recede from the landscape and gather in the sky before dark, nothing seems more important than the changing color on the horizon. I don’t know what allows me to be caught by the scene. Maybe I’ve learned something about getting beyond myself, or maybe the patient presence of beauty through all these years has finally permeated my distracted mind.

At least I understand enough now to be grateful for the light, and also for the ability to notice it. I try to pay attention, but I don’t know whether appreciating a glorious sky is a reward for my efforts or simply the creation shaking me awake. In either case it’s an unearned gift. In either case I’m grateful.

Have you experienced something beautiful lately?

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Making Peace with What You Can Do

March 13th, 2010 | 2 Comments

Walking in the early spring air this morning, I got by with a light cotton jacket. Yet the weather remains cool and damp. Green fronds push up from the ground, but the skies are grey. Trees are full of birdsong, though the bare branches appear unchanged since winter.

This almost-spring feels nothing like winter, yet there is no blossoming. As if the earth is saying: This, today, is what I can do. I can bring forth this much, but for now I can go no farther.

And the slow warming is enough. The turning of the seasons is exactly this; nothing more is needed. There is no hurry, no catching up to do. All is sufficient.

***

It’s tempting to discount those efforts we are able to make. How do you make peace with the limits of what you can do?

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The Taste of Chartreuse

March 3rd, 2010 | 3 Comments

In this season of almost spring (a time described beautifully by Amy Oscar at her blog: Story, Spirit, Seed), I find myself thinking about the taste of Chartreuse. The flavor suggests the greening of the earth, the scent of mown grass and fresh herbs, the return of the sun in spring. Even its luminous yellow-green color speaks of new life.

It’s still a bit early to retrieve the bottle from the dark recesses of the kitchen cabinet. But for the first time in months I remember it’s there, waiting. Its distillation of past growing seasons holds the memory and anticipation of spring.

Chartreuse and its secret recipe have a fascinating history, which lends a delicious mystique to the experience of drinking it. I first tasted the liqueur in the company of dear friends after we watched Into Great Silence together. The film shows the passing of a year in the Carthusian monastery of La Grande Chartreuse, where Chartreuse has been made for centuries.

To watch the film is to experience something of the monastic life, with its beauty and tradition, as well as its constriction and mundaneity. The film evokes both yearning for the spare beauty of the monastery and claustrophobia at its repeated routines. It has no speaking, no soundtrack, only a few frames containing a word or two of French. Sounds such as the creak of a monk’s kneeling bench are heightened, enveloped in profound silence. It’s a beautiful film of changing light and unchanging ritual. I was glad to share its silence with friends, and also glad to speak with them about it afterwards.

The elixir made by the monks is lovely to sip on its own. Mixing it with the clear, cold effervescence of club soda makes a wonderful drink as well, something like the taste of winter giving way to spring.

That transition is a process happening now, at least for those of us in the Northern hemisphere. But how do we know when to celebrate?

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The Practice that Yields Spring

February 16th, 2010 | 2 Comments

Winter seems endless about now. Even as the days grow longer, the snow piles deeper. With no discernable effect on the temperature, the returning light seems powerless over the season.

Yet exactly the right things are happening to bring life to a frozen landscape, even if the wintry scene appears unfazed. The earth continues its cyclical journey, progressing through the incremental changes that carry us into spring and the miracle of a new season.

But if spring were dependent on human motivation, it might be a different story.

If I committed to a vision and faithfully took a small step toward it every single day, I would want to see something happen. If I had begun a practice at the winter solstice, I would want to see some evidence of change by now. I would suspect I was wasting my time unless I could see some tangible result. Without that, I would probably be tempted to quit.

And then how would spring ever arrive?

I’m asking myself what small steps I need to be taking now. What does springtime look like for you, and what kind of steps might carry you towards it?

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