Blog with Matthew

Listen to FEEL!

Thanks to Oasis Audio, you can now preview Feel the audiobook.  Listen to chapter one here.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Find more information on the audiobook Feel: The Power of Listening to Your Heart. 

For Amazon Readers: http://oasisinternational.typepad.com/blogwithmatthew/2008/06/listen-to-feel.html

MORE PRUNING? (You have got to be kidding)

OK, OK so my last entry was about gardening.  If you have read Feel you know that we inherited quite the garden when we moved into this house six years ago.  We have had so much rain here in the Midwest that this may be the first year my garden could have actually looked like a part of a tropical  rain forest.  The plants are even double the size of last year and the weeds - they are taking over.

I love to do things with Laura.  If I had the chance to go bowling with the guys or shop for shoes with my wife, it might be a toss-up.  That is not because I like to go shoe shopping. Maybe that is a bit of a stretch.  Move that bowling up to going to a Cubs game and you can forget about the shoes (I am not a big bowler although I did take bowling in college as an elective and once got the "pin award" for bowling over 200.  I do not think I have bowled 150 before or since).  Anyway, Laura and I work together, walk together, play miniature golf with our kids together, we love to do things together.

We cannot seem to garden very well together.

I pull weeds but have a hard time pulling up actual plants somebody paid for that are intruding on another plant.  That is emotionally difficult for me - stupid isn't it?  Laura likes each plant to be in its own patch, with a bit of separation between.  For Laura, a flower should be dead-headed with a hint of brown where for me I would want total crusty-aged patina all over before I take it off.  This morning after an early morning coffee and run with my son Jackson, I came back to find Laura flower-pruning.  We have some great peonies in the north of our back yard that greet you as you come in the fence gate.  Having so much rain, and growing so vigorously, many were mud-peonies hanging down into the dirt and into other plants that are preparing to bloom.  To me, you could stake them up, hose them down and enjoy them for another 48 hours.  Actually, for 2 minutes as that is all I will look at them over the next 48 hours.  The truth is they were 98% dead and Laura had even had Cailin bring inside the ones that could be appreciated and put them in water.

A 7 AM gardening mom of three, is a reason to rejoice.  For Sure!  To me it was a reason to criticize - Laura cutting down still blooming flowers.  Bad choice Matthew.  The even crazier thing, is that if I go out after Laura has gardened, never observing in person what actual plants she has torn out or cut down, I actually like the end result much better than what I do.  It looks like a beautiful garden, when my weeding techniques makes it look just so-so and weed free.

So for gardening this morning, I need to take myself back to our four toolbox words: focus, know, value believe.  Am I willing to put away my own pride and wanting to be right and admit to myself that Laura's way is better?  Can I focus on the good end result instead of focusing on destroyed plants that might have actually cost a few bucks?  Can I believe that Laura is just helping me out in the yard, not trying to destroy anything.  Can I value a good contribution of a great partner instead of just rushing to criticize?  If I think about these things now, and change my orientation to a more accurate truth, perhaps next time my first reaction will be better.  I am going for emotional transformation in this area, and hope I will do better - even by the thinking out and journaling of this failure to you.  And, I desperately need help in the garden - I dare not deep six the efforts of my best co-worker! 

Trimming Trees

We were working in the yard yesterday and ended up doing some significant pruning of our trees.  There were some hanging over the flower garden that were sure to see that blooming lilies and wild geraniums and so forth were not going to get the light they need to grow.  In the front yard, there was more trouble.  Being six-foot-five, low branches over driveways, sidewalks and where I mow the lawn is a pet peeve of mine.  Let's cut them off and avoid branches in the face, OK?

I pruned and sawed and my faithful sons hauled them to the curb where the city will pick up and run them through the chipper on trash-day Friday.  Well, they say they will come for the branches on trash day in the town newsletter but they rarely do.  There is a large pile of branches in my front lawn today.

As I walked out this morning I was struck by how wilted the leaves were just 18 hours later.  The vigorous spring growth now looks like old useless scrub.  When it is not connected to the tree, the life is gone much faster than I would have imagined yesterday.  And I was reminded of the words of Jesus - actually they are some verses that are in my meditation/memorization notebook in my own scribbles.  I read them before I walked outside this morning.

“I am the Real Vine and my Father is the Farmer.  He cuts off every branch of me that doesn’t bear grapes. And every branch that is grape-bearing he prunes back so it will bear even more.  You are already pruned back by the message I have spoken.

  “Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can’t bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can’t bear fruit unless you are joined with me.

  “I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can’t produce a thing.  Anyone who separates from me is deadwood, gathered up and thrown on the bonfire.  But if you make yourselves at home with me and my words are at home in you, you can be sure that whatever you ask will be listened to and acted upon.  This is how my Father shows who he is—when you produce grapes, when you mature as my disciples.

To produce fruit we need to stay connected to the tree.  All the work, all the effort, all striving will just leave us on the curb wilting if we are not connected.  I often forget that, that is why I needed to write the verses in my little black book.  Yes it is really little and black.  If I am feeling lifeless and limp, maybe before anything else I need to see if I am connected to the source of life.