Soul Gardening: Cultivating the Good Life - Softcover

Terry Hershey

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0806640375 ISBN 13: 9780806640372

Publisher: Fortress Press, 1999

Synopsis

This book is about what it means to be a soul gardener. Reading it is not unlike walking in a garden-where it feels good to be alive, where we sit for a while and talk about what we learn there-which allows us to be more fully human. Terry Hershey recounts experiences from his own life, using the metaphor of gardening to speak to our longing for spiritual growth, a healthy lifestyle, and a more centered life. Enriched by Bible quotations and spiritual classics, his stories will lead you to new insights into the kind of life the Creator intends for us. The soul gardening exercises will lead you to your own experiences of the wonder and beauty of daily life. Soul Gardening will not make you a gardener. But it will nurture your soul, teach you how to live, and renew your sense of what it means to live the good life. It is about appreciating the ordinary gifts of grace, the value of solitude, the art of listening and the healing power of nature. Finding the balance between loving and losing, creating a sane lifestyle, being fully awake and alive and the value of slowing down the gift of seeing God's world with new eyes.

About this title

Review:

Don't turn to former-minister-turned-garden-enthusiast Terry Hershey for instructions on how to prune, weed, or fertilize; turn to him for guidance on how to open your heart to the rhythms of the garden. Likewise, look here not for listings of plants or tools, but for advice on how to slow down enough to appreciate the space between your door and the garden gate.

"My garden placed me squarely in the world of sun and moon, wind and rain, soil and water, insects and animals, summer and winter," writes Hershey, who goes on to tell the story of how cultivating a garden changed him from a hard-charging, success-driven minister to a guy who spends sunny mornings wrestling with his dog and child on the dew-laden grass. After becoming "unraveled by an iris" he sighted while rafting down the Colorado River, Hershey became enthralled by the wonder and the madness of creating a garden.

Hershey feels that gardeners have a chance to go through life fully awake, if they'll just slow down long enough to savor their gardens. "Gardening can be strong medicine," he writes, "an elixir that nurtures and shapes the soul." Unfortunately, even while living on a rural island in Puget Sound, Washington, Hershey sees that gardening, just like so much else in life, has become a competitive activity, an excuse for haste, worry, and overwork. In an attempt to counteract the rush toward accomplishment, Hershey celebrates not just the joy of discovering plants and digging in the dirt but also the profundity of resting on a bench beneath a honeysuckle vine. He remains deeply committed to just sitting in the garden, and in this wise and heartfelt book, he invites all of us to join him. --Valerie Easton

About the Author:

Terry Hershey has served as a Protestant minister and is now a landscape designer and writer on Vashon Island in Washington State's Puget Sound. He speaks throughout the U.S. on both gardening and spirituality. His earlier books include Go Away, Come Closer; Intimacy; and Beginning Again. This is his seventh book.

About this edition

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0806640375
• ISBN 13: 9780806640372
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 168