i've been thinking a lot about growth recently. And I've got the dirt under my fingernails to prove it.

It's the second year of our family's organic garden, and even though it's just a small plot, I'm looking forward to a good crop of beets and squash, beans and tomatoes, carrots, cilantro, basil, and mint. In the meantime, I'm tending to the needs of each plant as it grows—and finding a rich supply of spiritual lessons day after day.

In his parables, Jesus used many agricultural images, since they were so familiar to his Galilean audience. Important spiritual ideas paralleled the normal activities people were involved in. "It's like this ...," he would explain. And then he might talk about a man sowing grain. Some of the seeds fell on a hardened path where the birds ate them up; some on rocky areas where they couldn't grow deep roots; some among weeds that choked them out; and some in good soil where they produced a rich harvest (see Matt. 13:1–23).

Same seed, different results. I've been learning as a gardener that the quality of the soil makes all the difference. The better prepared and tended to, the better the outcome. Before I plant anything, I spend a lot of time just clearing the weeds, breaking up the soil, and working in fresh compost. Otherwise, not much will happen.

So Jesus was illustrating the necessity of preparing ourselves to receive the Word of God—all that God imparts to us. He was asking us how ready we are to let spiritual growth happen within us. It may be useful to ask ourselves: Is my heart so hardened that the Word never takes root? Am I unforgiving and resentful about something that happened long ago? Am I rigid in my outlook that a certain activity has always been done a certain way? Do I have little expectation that a change for the better can occur? If so, then I'm not letting the healing ideas take root, and immediate opportunities are lost.

That's not to say another round of sowing won't occur another season, but the same hard ground will have to give at some point. Again and again, Jesus encouraged his listeners to repent, meaning to turn again, to rethink something and go in a different direction. It's really just breaking up those resistant attitudes so that a spiritual solution can grow from modest beginnings to full answers.

As long as conditions are pretty favorable, it looks like a spiritual life is developing. But as soon as things get tough, when only deep roots will give access to what is needed to endure, a halfhearted commitment to spiritual growth withers away. So how might that rockier ground look to us today? Like anything that has become routine and uninspiring—whether it's reading a Christian Science Bible Lesson without really absorbing and living the deeper ideas, or serving on a church committee week after week without an openness to being transformed by the experience. These things may have the outward appearance of growth, but none of the real roots to ground them in what's spiritually rich and revitalizing.

We should ask ourselves if our daily interactions with God's Word are deepening our love for our neighbor, for our true self, and especially for divine Love—the source of all good. Gaining spiritual enrichment through prayer helps us stay ready to respond with grace and love to the unexpected hostile remark or hurtful action we might encounter at work or at a family gathering. We definitely will feel secure when we are deeply grounded in the "infinite resources" of Soul, as Mary Baker Eddy describes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (p. 60). Our best human efforts to respond to the worst of human experiences are meager and shallow unless they draw upon spiritual resources. Without the richness of Soul, forgiveness can be hollow, generosity begrudging, and joy dry and brittle.

It's always the mental soil that determines our experience. The quality of the spiritual seed remains more than equal to the demand, which is why Science and Health declares: "Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need" (p. 494). When a need goes apparently unmet and unanswered, some may feel a deep bitterness toward God. But Jesus' parable reminds us the good seed was always there, always ready to bring about an enormous harvest of good. What we have to ask is how receptive were we to it.

Above all, it's the weeds that require constant diligence. Boy, I will think I've done a vigorous and thorough job eliminating crabgrass, chickweed, dandelions, and bitterroot on a Saturday morning, but if I don't stay with it week by week, come fall, I'll have nothing but a whole lot of what I don't want and little (if anything) of what I do!

Jesus explained how the weeds intruding upon our spiritual harvest were "the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches" (Matt. 13:22). Now, more than ever before, we live in a world of material distractions—all kinds of things that would take root in our lives and crowd out any room for a spiritual life. In no small way, the empty seats in churches reflect a culture where everything from kids' sports to adult soccer leagues vie for Sunday morning time, not to mention all the other recreational, social, and virtual activities that seem far more attractive than prioritizing spiritual growth. And in cultures where there is such a discrepancy between the "haves and the have nots," the drive to attain that life of material ease can become an all-consuming end at the expense of the riches of Spirit.

That's not to say that we have to live austere, impoverished, and friendless lives. The portrait we get of Jesus from the Gospels is of a man beautifully provided for in what he needed, with deep friendships and meaningful activity. But it's clear that Jesus' complete commitment to God's will was always his highest priority.

Detecting and discerning distractions, and staying free of them, is something that takes both discipline and persistence. It's amazing how fast something that first appears small and insignificant in our lives becomes an enormous drain on our time and energy. Before we know it, all our resources are going toward something other than spiritual growth.

Mary Baker Eddy, who grew up on a farm herself, understood the insidious way a small intrusion on our mental space can, like witchgrass, get out of control in no time. She instructed students of Christian Science to make daily efforts to keep their consciousness clear of such unwanted thoughts and thought patterns. This is included in the Manual of The Mother Church under a section called "Discipline" and states: "It shall be the duty of every member of this Church to defend himself daily against aggressive mental suggestion, and not be made to forget nor to neglect his duty to God, to his Leader, and to mankind" (p. 42).

Aggressive mental suggestion isn't just the obvious intrusions, like news of widespread corruption or violence or exploitation. It can be a single ad on television for a new drug that represents a system just as invasive upon our hope and confidence in divine Love. Continually evaluating our thoughts keeps us alert to each appearance of distraction and deception, keeps us open to God's grace as it develops deeply and thoroughly in our lives.

This takes patience, something any member of Jesus' agrarian audience would have readily grasped. Today, as modern society promotes the expectation of instant gratification in everything from fast food to Internet speed, it can be tempting to put seeds in a garden and then look at your watch and start tapping your foot. Three months until harvest! Are you kidding? That's, like, ages! (Should I even mention what to expect with a century plant?)

Too often we look at everything in terms of immediate results. And while time doesn't really factor into spiritual growth—which is a timeless and eternal unfolding of good—it does represent a rhythm of fullness and maturing. Sometimes when we choose spiritual healing for ourselves, it isn't always experienced as quickly as we hoped. And we may become discouraged by our efforts. We may keep looking for that immediate outcome when what is developing quietly and steadily below the surface is preparing to give us far more than just the removal of physical symptoms or a discordant business condition.

I learned this lesson myself some years ago when I was troubled by a chronic ear infection that was both uncomfortable and continually impairing my hearing. I'd been praying diligently for a release from the persistent symptoms of this problem, but nothing seemed to resolve for days, then weeks, then months. Yet I was committed to a spiritual solution to this situation, so I continued praying and studying. I knew I was learning powerful ideas and finding mental comfort in them. Still, nothing changed outwardly.

It was during a church service on the second Sunday of July—a Sacrament Sunday, a service that celebrates consecration and spiritual growth—when everything came together. The First Reader was reading the Tenets of Christian Science from Science and Health. I had to admit, I hadn't thought about those six succinct ideas as a whole for quite some time. But I knew them well, so even though it was hard for me to hear, I could still follow the Reader as he went through each one. The fifth tenet particularly grabbed my attention:

"We acknowledge that the crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection served to uplift faith to understand eternal Life, even the allness of Soul, Spirit, and the nothingness of matter" (p. 497). The phrase that stood out to me was: "the allness of Soul, Spirit, and the nothingness of matter." I could see how beautifully and perfectly that summed up absolute Christian Science.

As I turned my attention back to the Reader, I suddenly realized that for the first time in so long, I could hear perfectly and without pain. Nothing had drained or adjusted as I had expected would be needed. Instead, there was just pristine clarity. Where had all that congestion gone? I wondered. Then the full implication of the tenet opened up to me. If Spirit is All and matter is nothing, then there was nothing to remove to begin with.

That was it. I was fully and completely healed, and there was no further trouble with either ear. Yes, the physical restoration was most welcome. But I also realized that those many hours of study and prayer made me receptive to a larger metaphysical lesson. And I have continued to draw more healings ideas from it ever since.

In retrospect, I could see how healing resulted naturally from growing spiritually. It was the outcome of all I'd done to invest in knowing God better, in knowing myself better as the divine reflection, and in knowing the healing Christ was transforming my daily thinking and living, thought by thought and action by action.

We ought to expect healing, every bit as much as we expect to discover that first tomato ripe and ready one morning as we go out to tend to our gardens. When we make process of cultivating spirituality our top priority, we'll find it brings results—often quietly, gently, but inevitably. So with equal measures of gratitude and delight, let's continue to gather in and enjoy this well-tended fruit of spiritual growth. css