A well-known children's story tells the tale of Mary Lennox, "a disagreeable-looking child," who -- sent to cold, miserable Yorkshire in England from her home in India -- discovers a hidden garden beside the large, forbidding house where she is made to live. With the aid of a "simpleton," the farm-boy Dickon, she brings this garden back to life. And as she does so, she discovers that the real world and the people she finds in it are not as unpleasant as she once thought.

Our initial practice of Steps 10, 11 and 12 can take us to our own secret garden, and at first we see it as a special place where we can hide sometimes from the harsh realities of what we believe are our lives. But continued daily practice teaches us something rather different. The secret garden that we thought to be a refuge from "reality" turns out to be reality after all; and it can be found, not only in our private inner moments, but in every interaction we have with people, places and things -- if only we will let that happen.