Writings: Healing
Beauty is in the Eyes (and Heart) of the Beholder
I’ve been doing a lot of gardening this summer, and a lot of standing around and admiring plants.
I get such pleasure from seeing plants and their flowers.
So many of the plants I see are my friends that I am always greeting any number of them by name: “Hello, Clover. I’m so glad to see you! I’m so glad you’re in my garden! Hello, Lavender. You look gorgeous today with your purple buds, and you smell so delicious!"
One of the most wonderful things plants can do for us (and it doesn’t cost a cent!) is to offer the healing of their presence.
Their beauty, forms, colors, scents, their feel, all can give us delight and sooth our spirits not only at a surface, physical level, but also at a deeper, heart level.
When I was in my late teens and living alone, I was very depressed (though I didn’t realize it at the time).
Many times were bad, but one of the worst was the end of the winter, because of the darkness and the cold, rather bleak landscape.
I discovered that walking down my street and watching the crocuses and then the daffodils and tulips bloom soothed a hurt inside and would lift my spirits at least a little.
I walked everywhere, and over several years got to know many little nooks and crannies, as well as large swaths of lawn, where the spring flowers bloomed. 
I made a point of looking for them, and would be cheered by them.
It became my spring habit to look for the first blooming plants wherever I lived.
Each street around my home, in whatever city I was living, would have its little areas that I would map out and check on to see what was blooming when, and to linger over my favorite spots.
Why did simply seeing flowers bloom cheer me so? Why did they help to lift the pain in my heart? I’ve never quite been able to figure that out.
I have thought of the colors and the effects they have on the human brain and psyche.
There are theories of what colors represent and I’m sure studies have been made of how people’s brains react to different colors.
I know that at different times I crave certain colors in my life, and they can make me intensely happy.
Another really important aspect of flowers is their spirit.
I believe, as do many indigenous and spiritually connected people, that plants have spirits of their own. They are beings with awareness and connectedness to a universal all.
The spirit of a plant can touch our own and have a profound effect.
Plants, at a basic level, are energy. Each plant has its own unique energy, as do we. That energy can touch us and interact with our energies to change our moods and our perceptions.
I believe much healing happens when we are simply around plants, whether we have a geranium on a windowsill, a few potted plants on the patio, or a whole garden. The spirit and energies of plants, as well as their colors and scents, can affect us deeply, even without our conscious awareness.
So take a walk around your neighborhood or around a public garden, come home with a few flowers to put in a vase and cheer up yourself and your home.
The Zen of Weeding
With all the gardening I’ve been doing this summer I’ve done a lot of weeding. I’ve started to think of weeding as a meditative activity. It can be tedious, tiring, boring. It can also give you contact with plants in ways you otherwise wouldn’t have.
I find that when I’m “in the zone”, just pulling out weeds (plants growing where they are not currently wanted) I don’t feel like there’s anything else I’d rather be doing.
I am enjoying the feel of the plants and the earth. I love studying the plants and learning more about their structure and how they grow. It is really amazing to start pulling out a plant like mugwort (a common “weed” that is actually a sacred plant in some cultures and a very good women’s herb).
I pull out the part that’s growing above ground and a bit of the root and I think I’ve got all of the plant, but then I pull out another one and find that it has a l-o-n-g root that goes running for several feet under the surface of the soil. A yard or two away I find that the plants growing there are actually attached to the root that I am pulling here. Who knew mugwort had such a large, connected system of roots? It makes me think of the connectedness of all beings, a connection that is hidden to everyday sight.
When I pull out plants I can see close up how the leaves grow out of the stem, where the flowers attach, how the seed pods look.
Did you know that ragweed, that much-reviled plant (yes, I’m allergic to it) actually has beautiful leaves, and tiny little green flowers? There are separate male and female flowers, both on the same plant.
The pollen gets blown by the wind to other plants so they can be pollinated and make seeds. It’s this wind-blown pollen that gets in our eyes and noses and makes us so miserable every August and September, and the pollen can travel for hundreds of miles on the wind.
I generally leave a few ragweed plants in my garden because I know I’ll be subjected to pollen from everywhere anyway.
The quiet connection with the plants that I feel when I am weeding is grounding and is its own sort of meditation. I say little prayers for the plants are going to the compost heap, as well as the plants that stay in the ground and continue to grow.
July 2002