Soul Tending

I’m sticking to the gardening theme today. It’s amazing for me to stay focused on ONE THING for longer than five minutes. I rarely remember what I was doing before my toddler cut the dog’s hair or before I noticed my jeans tattooed with a suspicious brown stain and followed the trail of crushed potato chips to the dirty-diapered suspect. 

If you are a mom struck with a distraction disorder like me, I’m praying you’ll be blessed by a tiny piece of continuity in my blog this week- that is if you can finish reading the post before someone flushes your favorite pair of socks down the toilet!
A few years ago I read a haunting work of fiction by William Young. The Shack is a book that totally transformed the way I view the sacred Trinity. 

It left me longing to dance beneath the stars with Jesus, hungering for a breakfast date with my Father God,
and dreaming of digging in the dirt with the Holy Spirit.  In this unique story, Young personifies the Trinity as three different characters. Together, they join a disillusioned man named Mack at a mountain cabin for a weekend of divine deliverance. 

Throughout the story, the Holy Spirit is personified as a beautiful gardener named Sarayu, meaning “wind.” One morning Sarayu invites Mack to join her in one of her gardens. While Mack expected to find Sarayu at work in a perfectly ordered English garden, he discovered something dramatically different.

Savor the scene Young creates in this small slice of The Shack:


It was chaos in color. His (Mack’s) eyes tried unsuccessfully to find some order in this blatant disregard for certainty. Dazzling sprays of flowers were blasted through patches of randomly planted vegetables and herbs, vegetation of the likes of which Mack had never seen. It was confusing, stunning, and incredibly beautiful.


“From above it’s a fractal,” Sarayu said over her shoulder with an air of pleasure.


“A what?” asked Mack absentmindedly, his mind still trying to grapple with and control the pandemonium of sight and the movements of hues and shades…


“A fractal…something considered simple and orderly that is actually composed of repeated patterns no matter how magnified. A fractal is almost infinitely complex. I love fractals, so I put them everywhere.”


“Looks like a mess to me,” muttered Mack under his breath.


Sarayu stopped and turned to Mack, her face glorious. “Mack! Thank you! What a wonderful compliment!” She looked around at the garden. “That is exactly what this is- a mess. But,” she looked back at Mack and beamed, “it’s still a fractal, to.” (128-129). The two spend the morning pulling weeds and transplanting plants; eventually Sarayu thanks Mack for the “hard work” he’d done during their time together.


“I didn’t do that much, really,” he apologized. “I mean, look at this mess.” His gaze moved over the garden that surrounded them. “But it really is beautiful, and full of you, Sarayu. Even though it seems like lots of work still needs to be done. I feel strangely at home and comfortable here.”


The two looked at each other and grinned.


Sarayu stepped toward him until she had invaded his personal space. “And well you should, Mackenzie, because this garden is your soul. And this mess is you! Together, you and I, we have been working with a purpose in your heart. And it is wild and beautiful and perfectly in process. To you it seems like a mess, but to me, I see a perfect pattern emerging and growing and alive- a living fractal.“

Today, I’m offering my mess to the Gardener of my Soul, and praying that from the soil of surrender BEAUTY will grow.
Today’s Treasure:  He has made everything beautiful in its time.
                                                                 -Ecclesiastes 3:11