Hoe Your Own Row

This morning in meditation group, one friend told us about her closest friend who is stopping medications for MS in favor of an all-natural diet approach. Since one person in our group is married to a person who has MS, we began venting our opinions. We felt we could do this with our close friend and neighbor, though we do not feel free to vent our opinions to acquaintances. We have to remember to "hoe our own row." In other words, mind our own business.

When i start minding someone else's business, i take on additional stress and distress. Why on earth would i want to do that? I may think i'm doing it out of love, but is love that stressful? Really?

Chances are i'm having an opinion because i'm attached to the outcome or attached to the person.

It's so much simpler and easier to hoe my own row, and just allow you to hoe yours--even though they may look completely different.

Earthworms Hiding

I planted onion seedlings yesterday. The earthworms i saw were small and sluggish, hiding from the newly hoed furrow. So i covered them and the onion seedlings up quickly.

Sometimes we want to go back into hiding, stay in bed, avoid our meditation practice while we hole up with our smart phone.

We know what's good for us.
You know what's good for you.

Lethargy and sleepiness are a hindrance--to your meditation and to your life.

Live according to your heart, according to your highest intention.  Wake up to this present moment.

I Hoed a Toad

This morning, while planting potatoes, i hoed a little
toad right out of the ground. She was surprised, and i was surprised.

Maybe you've felt sort of stunned yourself. For instance, when you're on retreat and something unexpectedly bubbles up from the sub-conscious or the unconscious. Maybe it's sort of ugly, which is a good reason to have repressed it all this time.

I just reviewed the last 12 hours of my father's life (18 years ago), and i suddenly saw it in an entirely different light.

Bringing things to light is part of what is called the purification process. We purify our minds, just like water is purified.

Surprising, yes! And unexpected. And lighter. I feel lighter without that dark thing hiding underground.

My Father's Legacy

My father died 16 years ago, but today is his birthday, so i'm thinking of him. He had absolutely no idea about flowers, but, as a farmer, he knew his grasses, something i do not know. He could identify wheat, rye, oats, and timothy. And he knew alfalfa and the clovers that he cut for hay 3 times every summer.

His idea of gardening was to plow up a quarter-acre with a small Massey-Ferguson tractor, then put us kids to work with hoes while he went to jog his harness horses. He himself was not much of a gardener, having plowed too many fields barefoot with horses during the Great Depression. He liked to move earth with equipment of any sort.

He did like to grow tomatoes and cucumbers though. That was his idea of a garden, out behind the horse barn, fertilized with horse manure, and growing plenty of weeds.

Three of his four kids (including me) got the gardening gene. The other one got the mechanical gene.

My father is gone now, but the fruit of his actions lives on. Three of us will be starting tomato seedlings sometime soon.