the surface before raking it and adding compost—organic material once alive, now decomposed. What could have been waste becomes fertilizer. I am not a gardener of the earth. But all of this seems to be so applicable to my desire to tend to the hard places of my heart. In a spiritual sense, this resonates with how to turn hard bitterness into fertile soil. You don’t beat bitterness out of someone. You don’t point at and poke it out, or plead with it or provoke it out of someone.
