Hi Anita – Thanks for engaging with the story. I like the thought of planting a seed in both gardens, when facing difficult life happenings. Weather is it seeds of compassion, grace, forgiveness. One we tend and one we let grow, yet both are acts of intention. Perhaps with the hope that when time comes and the wall between fade, we will know it for home.

Hi Alessa – I was introduced to symbolic language by Jung, Von Franz, Clarissa Pinkola Estés and Campbell. One thing they would all say is that we each have our own ways of relating to language and stories, and or need to find our own ways. I find your voice is like the walled garden in the story, structured, clear, and nurturing, offering a space where ideas can take root, which I find deeply grounding.

I feel we are both circling around a deep truth: that compassion and grace are not static traits, but dynamic movements. As you noted Yin and Yang complementary forces that shape how we relate to ourselves and others. Funny be we don’t have a word for that which is both Yin and Yang, the ‘thing’ that symbol points to. A limitation of Language. (Actually Jung I think calls it the ‘Self’)

I Imagine planting a seed in both gardens, the walled and the wild, is like tending both Yin and Yang. One grows through care and structure, the other through mystery and surrender. Compassion lives in both. Grace, as you noted, the courage to hold them together.

I agree that many genuinely authentic people are unaware of thier unhealthy behaviors, Jung might call thier shadow, as they haven’t been taught. As I explore the works of the Sufi, I’ve come to see that the teacher’s role is not to impart doctrine, but to help the disciple learn how to learn, to see beyond their inherited language, metaphor and the constructs they may not even realize they’re using.

My sense is that the future might be better served if we lean into this kind of teaching as it invites humility, curiosity, and transformation. It doesn’t demand belief, but encourages insight.

From what I’ve observed, this approach naturally leads to the kinds of experiences of compassion we’ve been discussing. Not compassion as a fixed idea, but as a living movement graceful, dynamic, and deeply relational.

Layla’s Garden

Years passed since Layla planted her seed in the land between the gardens. Travelers came and sat beneath it drawn by something they couldn’t name.

Layla had become a teacher, not in title, but by presence. She did not preach, nor did she instruct. She tended her garden, listened to the wind, and welcomed those who came with questions.

One day, a young man named Sami arrived. He was restless, full of ideas and doubts. He had studied many books and followed many paths, but none had brought him peace.

He asked Layla, as Layla once asked, “What is freedom?”

Layla smiled and handed him a seed. “Plant it,” she said.

Sami looked around. “Where?”

Layla pointed to the edge of her garden. “Anywhere you feel it belongs.”

He chose a spot near a crooked stone, cleared some weeds, and planted the seed. He watered it and sat beside it.

Over the weeks, Sami returned. He watched the seed sprout, then struggle. He built a small fence, then removed it. He tried to shape the plant, then let it grow wild. He learned to listen, not just to the plant, but to himself.

One day, he said, “I think I understand. Freedom is not a place or a rule. It’s a relationship.”

Layla eyes shone bright. “Yes. Between care and release. Between knowing and not knowing. Between the seed and the soil.”

Others came. Some planted in rows. Some scattered seeds in the wind. Some built walls, others tore them down. Layla never corrected them. She only asked, “What does your garden teach you?”

And so, the valley changed. It became a place of many gardens, some wild, some ordered, some both. People came not to escape, but to create. Not to be free from, or free to, but to be Free With.

And in the quiet of the evening, Layla would walk among them, her hands in the soil, her heart open to the wind and loved them Free.

Thanks Alessa
I agree, we return home to know it for the first time, and sometimes returning home means knowing when to create space for onself

Sometimes light can be both hope and limitation and the way out isn’t always up but down into the dark, into and through the places we fear. Even if the sky is brief, the flight, the life, is real.

The Sparrow and the Silo

There was once a sparrow who found itself trapped inside an empty grain silo. In the first frantic hours, it flew in circles, searching desperately for a way out but there was none. Exhausted, the sparrow eventually stopped and began to explore. To its surprise, it discovered food and water, enough to survive for a very long time.

Days passed. Then weeks. The sparrow grew used to its strange new world. It was safe, even comfortable but achingly lonely.
One morning, the sparrow noticed beams of light shining through cracks in the silo walls. Excited, it flew toward them, hoping for escape. But the cracks were too narrow. Still, the light was beautiful, and the air near it was fresh and cool. It reminded the sparrow of the sky it once knew.

So, each morning, the sparrow would rise, fly toward the lights, and peer through the cracks. Some days, it caught glimpses of the world beyond, trees swaying, clouds drifting, the shimmer of open air. These moments gave it hope and belief.
A year passed.

One morning, the sparrow realized it had stopped flying. The routine had faded. The hope had dimmed. It had grown old, tired, no longer wishing to believe, that just maybe this time. The sparrow found it even resentful of the beams of light that once inspired it. They now felt like taunts, reminders of a freedom that maybe never was.

The sparrow began to spend it days doing little. Some days it simply sat. Sometimes as it sat its mind would sometimes quiet as its breath slowed that was a kind of peace. Then in that stillness, it noticed something it had never noticed before, a faint current of air, like a whisper.

Curious, the sparrow followed the oh so slight breeze to a dark corner of the silo full of shadows, a place it had always avoided. There, hidden in the shadows, was a hole. The hole looked deep. Maybe endless.

The sparrow hesitated. It knew the hole might be a trap, fearing that once it entered there might be no going back. But something in the whisper called to it. So, gathering its courage, the sparrow descended.

The hole turned out to be a tunnel which was long and dark. There was no light, no sound only silence. Many times, the sparrow grew afraid. Cold and hungry, it nearly gave up. But just when it thought it could go no further, it felt the breeze again, stronger now, carrying the scent of open air.

With the last of its strength, the sparrow pressed on.

And then, light.

The sparrow emerged into the world it had ached for so long. The sky stretched wide above. The wind lifted its wings and for the first time in what felt like forever, the sparrow flew, not in circles, not in hope, or belief, but in freedom.

I’ve told that version of the story before but now wondering if the ending wasn’t an escape into magical wishing. So, an alternate ending to honor the part that sometimes wonders if the sky is even real.

The sparrow had emerged. After the long silence, through the darkens, hunger and fear it had found the sky again. The wind lifted its wings, and for a moment, it remembered what it was to fly, yet it remained still. The world seemed to have changed. Or perhaps the sparrow had… The sky stretched wide above was still the sky, the trees, silent sentinels of home, still trees… yet the songs of other birds sounded distant, like echoes from a life it no longer belonged to.

The sparrow, weary from its journey looked up at the sky, not noticing the shadow that moved quickly, silent, feline, inevitable. A cat, sleek and patient, had been watching from the tall grass. Its own hope ready, its own prayer to answered.

The sparrow in that moment, looking up, saw the sky not as a place to escape to but something it had carried within all along. The light. The wind. The longing. The courage. The silence… and yes, the darkens too. It was, and he was, all of it.

It had never been about the silo, or the tunnel, or even the sky. It had always been about the flight, the willingness to move, explore, to sit, to listen, to descend into the dark, and to rise again, even if only for a moment.

And in that moment, the sparrow was free.

I see I’ve become discouraged by the weight of events in the world, things I do not understand.
The choices we’re making don’t seem to match the values we say we hold most dear.
It leaves me feeling as if my feet have never truly touched the ground.
A fool, perhaps, for thinking that maybe…

When I start to feel this way I know its time to take a break from the digital world for a while and as the dervish suggests, walk on for a bit, and seek out a tree to sit beneath.

Relic or Root
“There was once a Gardener who came to a land of dry soil and broken roots. He carried with Him a seed of fire. He said to the people, “Plant this in your hearts. It will burn away the old thorns and grow into a tree whose fruit is peace.”

Some rejoiced and planted it.

Some cast it aside.

Most buried the seed in stone jars, sealed tight. It is too wild,” they said. “Too new. Too dangerous so we must prepare ourselves first before we plant it.”

Years passed. The few who had planted the seed found their lives changed. The fire did not consume the world though it warmed their hearts. And in that warmth, they knew others as themselves, they forgave and shared bread, they sang and walked in light. The mountain remained a mountain, but so did the flame.

Those who had sealed the seed began to speak of it as a relic and not a living thing or a way to be lived. They built temples to the jar, sang songs to the memory of the fire, and taught their children to guard the stone, keeping it from rolling away.

One day, a child asked, “Why do we keep the seed locked away?”

The elder answered quickly and with little thought and so spoke a hidden truth that was also a fear, “Because if we plant it… it might change everything.”

The child went into the hills and wept.

And in the silence, a voice whispered, “Life is as it must be… yet the seed still burns.”