Do you have a green thumb? Some gardeners have an amazing ability to grow lusciously green and healthy plants with a profusion of colorful blooms. They are careful to nurture their plants with just the right amounts of soil, water and fertilizer. They locate their plants where they receive the optimum amount of sunlight. Nevertheless, they have a secret weapon: their loving attention!
Try this experiment yourself: Take two plants and give them identical amounts of sunlight, water and fertilizer. For one plant, lavish on it lots of attention and words of praise for its beauty as it grows. Admire its blooms from the first beginning at the end of a stem, through its budding stage as the bloom develops and then once the flowers bloom. What beauty! Inhale their lovely fragrance. Is the bloom delicate or durable? Is the color a light pastel or a deeply rich hue? Connect with the plant as part of the Divine world of creation!
For the other plant, ignore it. When you do come to water it, notice anything that seems to be wrong with it. Does the green seem to be turning yellow? Are the stems spindly or too thick? Is it growing all to one side? Do the blooms fail to open? Tell it to shape up if it wants to be an object of beauty.
Now watch how these plants develop with these two very different levels of care and nurturing: one full of admiration and caring, the other tough and demanding – when the plants gets any notice at all. What you will probably notice is that the plant that has been admired and nurtured will flourish and grow faster, stronger and more lushly than its struggling counterpart.
If plants respond this dramatically to our loving admiration and nurturing care, how do you believe our own bodies respond to our loving attention and nurturing compared to condemnation and/or neglect? Even more amazing is the wisdom our bodies provide us as we, as spiritual beings, navigate the physical realm. Each body is a temple in which God lives! Each and every body is inherently good and valuable, and they flourish with our appreciation, love and respect. Welcome to your perfect temple of God!
Love and light,
Rev. Pam
