When we moved to our home in Colorado 13 years ago, my wife Stephanie and I decided to plant a vegetable garden.
This season we’re growing arugula, cucumbers, peas, radishes, tomatoes, and mint.
From the texture of the soil between your fingers, to gripping a weed to pull it out from the bed, to seeing tendrils and leaves coming up in rows from the earth — it’s all profoundly satisfying, almost on a cellular level.
It’s also a joy and a revelation to witness how with a little care and tending to, the earth brings forth such ripe abundance, like fresh bread from the oven.
Now, this is a far cry from the modern American Dream of fame, fortune, and power.
Those dreams keep disappearing into the far distance as you chase them, like mirages in a desert.
I know that from personal experience, the years I spent in Silicon Valley and in the boom-bust business world.
Instead of continuing to chase profits into the receding future, when Stephanie and I decided to move to Colorado, we made a conscious choice to plant a garden right here, at our home.
And it’s here where we harvest the fruits of our labor — both physical and spiritual.
The American dream of unending profits has left our social landscape barren, and that dream is now rightfully being replaced by tending our “inner gardens.”
What does that mean?
It means that rather than use other people as means to an illusory end, we’re now collectively recognizing that we must live in that place where, at the end of the day, we don’t have regrets for how we’ve acted toward others.
We seek to tend our relationships, instead, with kindness and honesty, being generous and loving to one another, minding the texture of each moment with care, just as we would care for the soil in which our food grows.
I know that making the turn inward, toward this humbler way of living, takes real work.
For me, I couldn’t have done it without Neale Donald Walsch’s ten Conversations with God books. They put the first seeds into the ground of my inner garden.
By reading Neale’s works and learning the practices he teaches, over five or ten years, I discovered how to feel, act, and embody gratitude, joy, and ease, and how to be a real role model for others.
The fruits of my daily spiritual practice are now nourishing to me and to others around me.
May you find your own inner garden becoming just as fruitful and abundant.
With love,
Steve
Steve Farrell
Worldwide Executive Director
Humanity’s Team
