A perfect garden

A butterfly delights in the flowers of the Butterfly Conservatory in Bohol. 

“A perfect garden,” my spiritual director once told me, “is not that which is filled with plants and has the most beautiful flowers.” He told me that a flawless garden is that which does not provide for any possible spot in which weeds may grow.

The gardens in the seminary may not be able to live up to that standard. For if you look around, you’ll notice that weeds co-exist with the beautiful plants you take care of.

Was it just years ago when an aspirant came to me one afternoon during work time with a  plucked out plant in his hand, asking me if it could be taken care of in the greenhouse. I had examined the plant before it took me sometime before I figured out that it’s just a weed.

The world is a humongous garden. And it is not a perfect one. We need to distinguish  plants which we need to take care of from those which need to be plucked out.

But it is not an easy task. 

We need to allow the small plants grow in order to determine whether they are real plants. If they are weeds, they need to be pulled out. This is important not just because they are out of place and they make the garden ugly, but, more importantly, they also steal away the nourishment which should be enjoyed solely by the plants.

The act of discernment can be likened to this. We need to know which are the plants from the weeds so that we can separate them. So that we can get rid of the weeds so that we could give proper care for the plants.