Article October 23, 1971 Issue

Mental Gardening

DEANE MILLER FRANTZ

I learned a valuable lesson one summer while weeding the ivy bed. I had not relished the thought of stooping to pull each troublesome plant. So I'd let them grow for a while. The ivy began to be lost in the dense foliage of dandelions, chickweed, and clover. It finally became clear that I'd better get busy and do a complete job. At first I didn't know if I could distinguish the weeds from the ivy, but I soon found that anything that was not ivy should be uprooted.

As I stooped and weeded, I realized how much like the ivy bed my thinking was. It too had become rather weedy. Thoughts of criticism, irritation, and apathy were crowding out and hiding God-derived thoughts of peace, activity, love, and healing. Then and there I determined to uproot the erroneous thoughts I'd allowed to take hold in my consciousness.

I could easily identify these thoughts. Anything unlike God needed to be uprooted and cast out. I began by rooting out criticism and impatience I felt toward friends and even fellow church members. I replaced these thoughts with the facts of man, as God knows him. I reasoned that since God, infinite good, is all-knowing, then what He knows of man, His own image and likeness, is good. And it is all there is to know of man. Therefore all I can know of man is good. Anything else is not true of man and therefore not real. God, divine Love, creates man in His own image, as the loving reflection of His nature. God's man sees himself as perfect because God, his Mind, knows him to be perfect. That leaves nothing to criticize. Christ Jesus gave us this command: "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."^{Matt. 5:48;}

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