Came across this post by Cheryl Wright and would like to share it with you.  Gardening as Cheryl describes is the perfect analogy to what it means to live your life as a practice: the exercise and pursuit of a consciously created life.

Here’s some of Cheryl’s post:

Cultivate Your Life

Gardening is a lot of work but reaps great rewards. Use these four gardening tasks to cultivate your life. 1. Identify and remove the weeds that are flourishing, clogging your life pores, complicating your relationships and smothering your dreams.
2. Water your life with quiet time to pray, meditate, read, plan, dream and enjoy your favourite leisure activities.
3. Wait patiently for your work to bear fruit and expectations to materialise.
4. Wonder at the beauty that adorns your life.

There’s no way we can put off taking care of our lives and not experience the backlash. Treat your life as you would a garden and you will enjoy the beauty of a well-cultivated life.
I’m no gardener by any stretch of the imagination, but I am fascinated with the similarities between a garden and our lives. While we could put the smallest gardening effort on hold without any serious consequences, there’s no way we can put off taking care of our lives and not experience the backlash. So, like a conscientious gardener we need to cultivate our lives to reap the best fruits and enjoy the beauty.
Rainy days may keep you from heading outside with straw hat and gardening tools. But they are the perfect days to sit inside and do some work on your life. So grab your favourite drink and snack, curl up with your journalling tools and cultivate your life.

Weed
Sometimes it seems they pop up overnight. Unlike some plants that struggle to survive, lose the battle, shrivel and die, garden weeds are indomitable. They anchor themselves in any kind of soil and withstand extreme weather conditions.
Life weeds such as feeling overwhelmed with responsibilities at home and at work, financial problems, difficult relationships, health concerns and so on, rear their ugly heads and choke the good and positive things in our lives.
Some life weeds have tap roots; they burrow straight down and deep. They pierce and break our hearts. Others with fibrous roots fan out and filter through the network of our lives infecting and poisoning all that is good and positive.
They create havoc in every situation and relationship, turning our lives upside down and inside out. They loom above other minor life weeds and force us to set aside legitimate concerns so we can cater to their demands for our undivided attention.
Life weeds sprout and flourish anywhere. They cling to us like parasites. They suck us dry and leave us listless and passive in our own lives.
With a discerning eye and a prayerful heart identify the weeds that are flourishing, clogging your life pores, complicating your relationships and smothering your dreams. Don’t deal only with what is on the surface. Dig to the roots of the weeds in your life and get rid of them to allow the free entry and flow of all that is good and beautiful.

Water
We know of course that too much water can drown even moisture-loving plants. So we are often advised to water our gardens regularly with a moderate supply to keep the soil moist and the plants healthy and alive.
When we get lost in the rush of daily living, it is easy to allow our personal lives to languish in the neglect caused by whatever turmoil may be commanding our attention or the heat of busyness and burnout.
It is honourable that we take care of our responsibilities to our families, our jobs and other areas as well. However, when we don’t pay attention to our personal lives: health, leisure activities, our dreams and other personal interests, we are delinquent gardeners of the lives we’ve been given.
We water our lives when we take time to nurture ourselves with quiet time to pray, meditate, read, plan, dream and lose ourselves in the activities that we enjoy.
Are you drowning your life with too much of a good thing or killing your life slowly by leaving it to languish, dehydrated and starved of crucial life-saving nutrients?

Wait & Wonder

Visit the link above to read the full post.