Planting Seeds

When I was a farmer, I used to spend every spring planting seeds.

The tools, of course, were so much more sophisticated than centuries ago when humans moved from their hunter and gatherer state to the agrarian state, but still it struck me as a relatively boring task.

What kept me engaged though was realizing that there was something profound at work.

At the time I was relatively new to the teaching of Science of Mind, but even with my inexperience I knew that there was something much deeper to this exercise than met the eye.

Ernest Holmes wrote a lot about planting seeds, and maybe that’s why I gravitated to the teaching so willingly. He equated the planting process as being the idea, but more importantly he wrote about making sure that the soil – our mind – was ready to accept the idea that we were planting.

This is where – to use another metaphor – the rubber really hits the road.

It’s great for us to have ideas, but if we haven’t prepared the soil by ensuring that it is well-nourished, healthy and ready to receive, we haven’t done anything. Our ideas will quickly wilt on the vine, obliterating any hope of harvest at a later date.

This all sounds like wonderful imaginings I know, but anyone who has worked with treatment and is willing to trust the creative process knows that without a receptive vessel, nothing happens.

Sometimes it can take years for the harvest to come. But come it will, if we have patience and if we continue to nurture what we believe in.

I know many parents who wonder when their children are in their teenage years and dissention raises its ugly head: how are we ever going to get through this time? What was I thinking as a parent? How did I go so wrong?

But all the while, throughout their lives, we are planting seeds. And when that child gets past those years, when the faith of the parent remains steadfast, the rewards are deep and wide, and long – like furrows that can only bring the greatest of harvests.

We don’t know what will come. We can never really know. And it’s not our job to know.

Our job is to maintain the faith, to keep the vision. It is God’s job to grow the wheat – the form of the seed that we have planted.

We are never so fortunate as when we are faithful to our vision, despite outward appearances of drought and pestilence.

Plant the seeds with confidence. Or as Henry David Thoreau famously wrote: “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.”