Caring for House Plants and Spiritual Practice

When people visit my home, they often comment about the plants growing in the various rooms of the house. They compliment me about how healthy the plants look and how well I must care for them. I accept the compliment but rarely do I share my secret to caring for house plants. I’ve learned it’s easier to simply accept the compliment than to try to explain my secret in caring for house plants. I stumbled onto this method a long time ago and I found that it works for me.

So what’s the secret? It’s really quite simple. Once a week, usually on Friday, whether the plants need it or not, I dose them all with water. I water all the plants enough so that water flows out of the bottom of each plant. When I see water coming out, I’m done with that plant and move to the next. They all get the same treatment. Once a week, each and every plant gets drenched.

Of course, this isn’t a good way to care for plants. While the plants that are in my home are resilient enough to do okay with this kind of treatment, most house plants don’t respond well to this kind of care. Only the hearty survive. When I see a new plant not doing well, I give it away so I don’t have to deal with it. The truth is: I’m not very good with house plants.

However, because some people think I do well with house plants based on seeing what they assume are healthy plants in my home, they sometimes give me exotic plants as gifts. Few of those plants remain in my home for very long. My friends who are more careful than me about caring for plants typically end up with the more delicate varieties before I’ve had the chance to kill them.

My method of care for plants works for hearty varieties that will grow essentially anywhere, but it’s clearly wrong for plants that need particular care or special soil and food, like cacti, succulents, or most anything that blooms.

It may seem like a bit of a leap, but I find that people are much like houseplants when it comes to the care of the soul. It’s not very helpful for people to get a good dose of spirituality or spiritual practice now and again and not much in between. I suspect many people already know that, particularly those who have been attempting to integrate spirituality with other aspects of their lives. A spiritual practice that supports our growth and integration requires that we take time to till the soil of our inner selves and water and fertilize our hearts on a regular basis. Perhaps that’s why I find it so surprising that many books on prayer, meditation, and spiritual practice are not particularly helpful to most people. Many books, as well as the spiritual teachers who use them, recommend one approach or type of spiritual practice for all people. Recommending that everyone do the same spiritual practice is really a lot like how I care for house plants. What happens to the plants? Most varieties begin to die. Similarly, many people languish when forced into a mode of spiritual practice that isn’t right them.

I’m one of those people who find meditation to be a simple and relatively easy practice. I’m able to sit in silence and move to an inner sense of quiet without much difficulty. I also tend to be an introverted individual who enjoys solitude over groups of people. It’s part of my personality. This is probably how my brain is hard-wired. But many people aren’t like me. Others struggle with the spiritual practices which I find easy to do.

I have a very good friend  I’ve known for over 25 years. He’s tried meditation but it’s like torture for him. But he’s naturally extroverted, very musical, and is very active physically. Even when standing in line, he’s likely to move around a bit like he’s dancing. Some time ago I suggested that he try yoga as a spiritual practice. Yoga has been very helpful for him. He’s very kinesthetic and expressive with his body. He finds yoga to be a great way to move to an inner state of quiet. But for me, yoga is just exercise. He and I are very different when it comes to spiritual practice.

While I contend that the spiritual dimension of life is an essential part of every person, the way to best nurture the spiritual dimension may be very different for one person than for another. In one of my early books, The Good Road: The Journey Along a Spiritual Path, I discuss this at some length. I find it helpful for people to consider what’s been helpful in the past in terms of spirituality and how people have experienced “spiritual moments” in life. Those are clues to how we are naturally pre-disposed to the spiritual dimension of life.

While it can be important to experience new approaches to spiritual practice, for most people, the spiritual practices that connect most are often aligned with who we are. While some writers approach this topic from the perspective of personality type, I’ve found it more helpful to consider the model of neuro-linguistic programming and the way we process information and memories: visually, aurally, or kinesthetically. While psychology has various ways for explaining what makes us different from others, the important thing isn’t how we understand our uniqueness but that we acknowledge that it impacts the spiritual dimension of our lives. With that uniqueness in mind, we’ll understand that when it comes to spiritual practice, one size doesn’t fit all. Instead, we each need to utilize what’s most helpful to us for the care and nurturing of our spirits.