happy snail friend in my garden

If your heart was a garden, what would it look like?

I got to thinking about this in the shower tonight.
I thought of all the miraculous new friendships forming and growing. Friends across the oceans or just a few metres from my desk at work. New friends that seem like they just pop up one day, and it is like they have always been there.
I thought of friendships from childhood that change and thrive in new ways. The ones who knew you when you were a geeky pre-pubescent lanky 11 year old… and still love you. The ones that change in time – when once you spoke everyday about anything and everything, now it’s only every couple of months… but it’s still a tangible connection and love that has deepened with experience and appreciation.
And I think of how I cultivate these friendships. How I tend to them. How I become more honest and more able to show all parts of me… even the parts that don’t make sense, the parts that are easily bruised and the parts that hurt.

I see my heart garden, and it is blossoming madly and divinely and wildly. It is that tangled garden on our grace walk that begged us to adventure in. It is full and alive with wildflowers, birch trees, insects, long grass, roses, snails, enchanted trees and birds. Under each leaf is an exciting new world ~ a chance for me to discover another and rediscover myself.

I saw this garden as I stood in the shower ~ and I couldn’t help myself. I giggled, I jiggled, I wiggled, and I danced with joy.

“We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business;
we are each other’s magnitude and bond.”
~ Gwendolyn Brooks

What does your heart garden look like?

~ HIGHLY recommend the experience of reading joshua kadison‘s letter. double the pleasure by opening his song “One Song” when he links to it in the letter. jk is *remarkable*