Choosing what to plant...

Last September, Tim and I visited the Ravenglass & Eskdale Heritage Steam Railway in Cumbria. It's a seven-mile line from Ravenglass to Dalegarth and we had a wonderful few days exploring, meeting special people and sitting soaking up the peace. At Ravenglas station, they have chosen to re-cycle heritage pieces, such as timber railway sleepers, ceramic telegraph pole connectors and ironwork and have planted and created a beautiful garden by the old signal box.

There is a planting theme running through a few services I have been privileged to create. Some souls have a sharp start in life and take the hurt and pain and make choices to create loving lives as adults. Their loved ones speak of a graceful, kind, gentle and loving nature and how everything they chose to do came from love and everyone was the best version of themselves from being around them during their lives.

Not everyone is able to overcome pain and can become stuck in a cycle of being hurt and angry. Observation gifts us the grace to see that their hurt causes them to go on to hurt others and their anger can be so all-consuming that it dominates how they treat others. They choose to control and manipulate in an effort to manage life and to give them the attention that is a constant craving within, driven by a need to fix what has passed and is therefore unfixable in that way. These souls can be blind to what they are planting and creating.

Love cannot be managed nor created through unkindness.

Love, freely given, flows as energy that then flows effortlessly to where it is needed.

There was a loving line in a recent service where a lady was described as having high standards, which she held herself to throughout her life. Yet she never said an unkind word about anyone else and was known for her understanding and acceptance of everyone else's faults.

A lovely man, who had been kind all his life, spent his last years living with advanced dementia in a nursing home. Every time one of the other patients would get distressed he was the first one out of his chair to offer them loving comfort and everyone at the home was bereft when he passed away.

Another loving soul said prayers with her young children every bedtime. The prayers were always for others and she continued to say her loving prayers throughout her life, till near the end of her time here on earth, when she would drop off to sleep as there were so many people held in her loving thoughts.

They created life gardens filled with love.