What if we had the humility to embrace in an evolutionary way that a need for meaning has us rather than the other way around? Then, tending to that meaning that is already in us with its purpose, would guide us more surely than if we thought we were in charge. A friend of mind calls it tending to the holy.
There is not one of us who does not tend to something: a job, children, pets, or our own needs. We can pretty much look at our checkbooks and see where and what we actually tend to. Making this conscious will help us be truthful about our tendencies and where we place meaning.
Phrases posted on Facebook, September 2018
I have a messy hibiscus tree on my veranda that I tend. Each day it puts out five to ten huge red flowers. The tree needs a gallon of water a day and constant grooming. The flowers last a day, and so the spent ones need to be picked off the branches. Still there is debris everywhere. In nature, that would not matter at all. It would simply become compost. On the veranda it becomes goo. To have all that beauty just outside the door takes tending. Over time this tree has become more for me than an attractive hibiscus tree grown five feet tall. It is a Being. Anything we truly tend becomes more. That is the mystery of care.
Yesterday I e-mailed a friend asking her to be tender with herself. Don’t you love that tend is in tender?
We are a throwaway society, and being so we, too, are somehow devalued. Folks in the past didn’t have so many things. My grandmother had a beautifully carved water scooper she wore on her belt when she went walking in the mountains of northern Sweden. Coming to a brook she would use her scooper and drink. To me that object is alive with something ephemeral. It was valued, that is, it was tended to. It’s amazing what we gain if we choose one thing to use over and over with reverence: a favorite pen, a cup, a scarf, or a piece of jewelry. Giving it value we are mysteriously restored in value also. This is worth pondering and doing.
Those of us who grew up with benign neglect know we were tended to sufficiently. There is something, after all, to being trusted to use your own good sense when you are a kid. That then continues later in life. Persistent neglect is another thing! And over-tending a child can often make for rebellion, ingrained anxiety or entitlement. There needs to be enough mutual space in tending a loved other.
It’s disconcerting to realize that many of us, without knowing it, may be tending a fear, a superstition, a feeling of resentment, a lack of self-trust, etc. etc. Anything like the above becomes a false center within us that we give devotion to. I call it limitation worship. We are serving a false god. The good news is that we have the ability to stop it.
If we are tending to fear instead of possibility (as in the last post) I believe we are in a fundamental sense tending to being “right” about how “wrong” and limited we are.
That is still an effort at being in control, isn’t it? In contrast, confessing that we don’t really know and yet want to live by discovering is about living and loving our moments as fully as possible.
When we tenderly tend to whatever feels small and wounded inside, we are not only cultivating more wholeness in our selves, we are also contributing to the welfare of the common ground. With quantum physics science has demonstrated that everything is connected to everything else. With that understanding, any small steps of care will surely count!
In My Argument with the Gestapo, Thomas Merton wrote: If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for. That’s a HUGE tending question.
What if we could approach the things we daily use not as solely functional things for our convenience, but also as having worth in and of themselves? We would then fill our world with a vibrant sense of reciprocity and so be less likely to trash and discount and more likely to respect and conserve. This approach would tend our circumstances. We’d be able to recognize not only people, but also things as worthy, alive and spirit filled.
The beautiful hibiscus tree I mentioned earlier in my posts on tending has to come inside now to survive the winter. The root ball was cut, the branches lopped off even though some of them still sported blazing flowers. To the plant this must have felt like an assault. There is uncalled for abuse, which we are witnessing on the media, and there is strict containment, a tending so that life can go on. How different they are!
Tenderly
Enjoying the
Non-stop
Dearness of people and things
