How Spring make a garden with Stone

A Poem by Rumi

How Does Spring Turn Hard Stone into a Garden?

A stone protects itself, but soil nurtures life.

Young Bum Lee

How does spring turn
a hard stone into a garden?
Become soil. Break open.
Then from your broken heart
countless wildflowers will bloom.
For too long, you have been made of stone.
Try another way. Surrender.
— Rumi

This short poem contains, in only a few lines, the wisdom Rumi spent a lifetime discovering.

Rumi, the great thirteenth-century Persian poet, was also a scholar of law and philosophy and one of the foremost mystical voices of the Sufi tradition. Today, he is loved throughout the world and is sometimes spoken of alongside Shakespeare. In recognition of the 800th anniversary of his birth, UNESCO commemorated Rumi in 2007.

Many people who move to Laguna Woods come here with a simple hope: to spend the closing years of life in health, happiness, and meaning, and eventually to bring their lives to a peaceful and graceful close. Rumi’s poem seems to whisper to us one of the secrets of how this may be possible.

For much of our lives, we have lived like stones.

We have sometimes argued with one another because we were convinced, “I am right.” But time has slowly changed us. We have grown older. We have gained a little more patience. Our strength has diminished, our desires have softened, and our surroundings have changed.

Here we have good neighbors and many friends who can become our teachers.

And yet, small stones still remain within us.

If those stones could finally break apart and become soil, Rumi tells us that countless wildflowers might bloom from our broken hearts.

But why soil?

Why does Rumi ask us to become soil rather than stone?

A stone is not beautiful simply because it is strong. There is a sadness in stone because it cannot nurture life. Soil is not precious simply because it is soft or weak. It becomes precious because it gives life to something beyond itself.

Rumi does not tell us to become stronger.

He tells us to become softer.

He asks us to become soil.

A stone leaves only itself behind.

Soil leaves flowers behind.

A stone cannot receive even a single seed. Soil is different. It may be stepped upon and beaten by rain, yet it continues to give of itself, nurturing countless forms of life.

The “breaking” Rumi speaks of is not failure or defeat. It is the breaking apart of our pride, stubbornness, and certainty—the slow transformation of the hard places within us into fertile soil.

Only when we become soil can love begin to grow. Understanding takes root. And the flowers of forgiveness begin to bloom.

Perhaps old age is no longer a time for building more stones around ourselves. Perhaps it is the season for turning the stones we have accumulated over a lifetime into soil.

If so, growing old is not merely the melancholy hour of sunset.

It may be one of the most precious and beautiful seasons of life.

As the conviction that “I am right” slowly breaks apart, something new may grow in its place: understanding instead of resentment, peace instead of competition, and warm friendship instead of loneliness.

Then each human heart may become a small garden.

And perhaps, when all those little gardens come together, all of Laguna Woods may someday become a garden filled with flowers.

I believe this is the beautiful miracle of spring that Rumi wanted us to see.

Spring is not created by the changing of the seasons.

Wherever stone becomes soil, flowers will bloom.

And upon those flowers, God quietly plants the spring.