The Garden of the Soul

Just random thoughts today. I've picked up again my copy of An Invitation to Love by Thomas Keating. The plan this time is to read it in its entirerity. Why, you may ask, or maybe you don't care, I don't know but here goes. Right now, I'm feeling the intense need to work on internal issues in order to improve my ability to be in healthy, life giving relationships. HTB ( Hubby to be) and I are doing well in our growing closer and getting to know each other. I am realizing some patterns in me that are beginning to surface again and that need to be dealt with. In the past, these have cropped up and I swept them back into the dark recesses of my pshyche and did not deal with them.....to the detriment of my interpersonal relationships, I might add.

This time, I am saying NO to the desire to avoid and dismiss them. Is it painful? Hell Yes. Is it hard to look some of this square in the face? Hell Yes, again! But I have to do this or risk loosing the man I love. Programming note here: I am doing this for me and for my relationship with HTB as well as all other interpersonal relationships.

So as I stated at the beginning, I started reading Invitation to Love again today. So much of what Fr. Keating has said so far, echoes things that my therapist has told me/worked with me. I laugh because, its cheaper to read this book than it is to sit for an hour session with a therapist. When funds permit it, I plan to go back, but right now my therapist is the Holy Spirit speaking through Thomas Keating. What stood out for me today was the mention of prerational emotional programs. Emotional programs that came into being in our infancy and early childhood. Sometimes, the emotional programs are good, if you were raised in a healthy, life giving environment; but if you were not, then chances are the emotional programs that were developed were not good ones.

What I walked away from today after reading the first two chapters is this: The soul is a garden. God/Jesus is the Master Gardener. Emotional programs are like plants, some have large, intertwined root systems that make it difficult to"weed" the garden if you will. These "plantings" require much work (therapy, prayer, meditation and time) in order to extract them from the ground of our soul garden leaving no residual root particles that could cause the "unhealthy plant" to return again. These unhealthy emotional plantings if you will need to be rooted up and out of our garden. I'm reminded of Matthew 15:13 that talks about "every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted." Can I take it literally? I don't know if it is liturgically or theologically correct to do so, but it gives me great hope that emotional programs that developed in me during my infancy and early childhood that are detrimental to me and others, are not the will or desire of a loving God. All I know that is today, I have renewed hope that my God wants me to live, move and have my being in healthy, life giving relationships.