Today, I finally got to "get my hands in the dirt." And it was more lovely and wonderful than I'd remembered. There is something about the smell of dirt and the feel of it between my fingers that just hits a place somewhere deep inside.
My mom and I spent most of the morning and early afternoon planting flowers in front of our house. Yesterday we spent hours planning and searching for our favorites... The African marigolds are always tricky to find, but the Osteospermum were a fantastic discovery. Every year, shaded flowers for the bed under the window and beneath the pine tree present quite a challenge, but our geraniums, lobelia, pansies and coral bells look really beautiful.
Tomorrow we'll add some snapdragons to the mailbox corner, a few lavender to the lamb's ear along the back fence, and continue our search for a potentilla bush (my dad's favorite) for the front porch.
We haven't bought any dianthus yet, but saw some really gorgeous ones today that will look great next to the peonies in the back.
And I'm still trying to convince them that a few tomatoes would be perfect in the corner planter and that rhubarb would be fill in the area on the side of the house quite nicely.
It's been a year since I was in Tennessee planting flowers with my Aunt Susan, learning about cucumbers and tomatoes from Uncle Wayne and watching the moonflowers every night with Aunt Joan and Uncle Jim. It was incredible how quickly all those memories flooded back today with the smells of the dirt and flowers. And with those memories, stirred in my heart and soul so many of the beautiful things that have been buried beneath the clutter of the busy weeks and months of this year.
There is a patience, a humility, a slowness and trust in gardening that most of my life rushes right past. I remembered today that it takes days and weeks of patient watering and nurturing to see the little plants grow. I remembered that the neatness and patterning of my planting has little to do with the beauty of the flowers--it's really not about my work to arrange them in some artistic way at all, their beauty is entirely their own. I remembered the trust required to hope that little seeds will turn into new plants that will bear their own seeds.
I think these were really important things to think about today, to be reminded of. There is a lot of uncertainty on my horizon. Yes, I know I'm going to Mississippi in 13 days. Yes, I know I'll be teaching at Hazlehurst Elementary School. But my imagination can hardly handle the questions and apprehensions and hopes held within those certainties. And I know that right now, all I can do is wait, and pray. I know that these next few days may offer the moments of Sabbath rest that I know my weary soul needs if I can slow down long enough to escape the anxiety and apathy that can so quickly suffocate and paralyze.
So, I'm going to keep putting my hands in the dirt. I'm excited to see how much my little flowers might grown in the next 2 weeks and I know they might not at all. But there is something that happens out there in the dirt that quiets my heart and nourishes my soul in desperately needed way right now.
In all this thinking, I did some reading through my journals from last summer and found this little bit. I really truly believed it then, and am praying for these truths to settle in again...
“Come breath, go breath; I’m not going to pull any longer.” ~Nana
If only we understood the deep wisdom of these words. This kind of breathing is of the kind of living that overflows from the deep well of freedom.
Free from the desperate striving and agonized clutching that are the ladder climb to ‘success.’ Free from the anxious heartache of one who has lost control. The metronome marking the rhythm of this breath is not heard among the ringing, dinging, clanking of our scurried lives. It is the rhythm of the silence of the darkest hour of night before the dawn as the symphony of birds await their cue. It is the rhythm of the rain as it tumbles down the leaves and pats upon the ground. It is the rhythm of the lightening bugs as they paint their portraits in the sky.
“Be still and know that I am God.”
Stillness and ‘non-motion’ are hardly the same. Rather, stillness invites the most elegant and vigorous dances of motion. In stillness, all the world arrives at once. The blackberries and raspberries are sweetest when they are left on the vine just one day longer. The stillness of the harvester’s hand is not apathetic or lazy or ignorant as it waits. It is moving in time with the movement already and always swirling through the pulse of life. The same the moonflower and the wren’s eggs and the human heart.
“Be still and know that I am God.”
Oh the patience of stillness requires more endurance than a marathon! To be still is an act of great humility…surrendering one’s self-importance, one’s assured autonomy, one’s skill, determination and strength. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the absence of self. And still illumines our deepest fears of self.
“Who am I? Am I able? What is the measure of my value?”
“Will the raspberries ripen for tomorrow? Will the wren’s egg hatch? Will the moonflowers open their blooms if the moon’s light is lost in the clouds?”
And yet, with each inhale the lungs relinquish the breath to be exhaled. In stillness, we see and hear and smell and taste and feel the pulse of this rhythm calling us to open our selves, to open our hands and spread our arms wide in the embrace of freedom.
“Be still and know that I am God.”
And in this freedom, we stop looking for our own reflection in the people of our lives. We stop chasing our own shadows. Rather than seeking to shape people into our own image and squeeze every moment into our best laid plan, we begin to look into our own eyes and remember that the essence of our existence is the rhythm of our breath. We are not ‘alive’ until our first cry or breath and our death is marked by our final exhale. And then we begin to look into the eyes of the neighbor and the mother and the stranger and the friend and remember that the essence of their existence is the rhythm of the same breath. We look at the food we eat grown from the plants which are nourished by our exhale and remember that they too have life by breath. We see the mark of eternity within the breath of every person and in the heartbeats and roots of all living things.
And thus, in our stillness, we begin to know God.
“Be still and know that I am God.”
Amen...again.
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