“…..every time there are losses there are choices to be made. You choose to live your losses as passages to anger, blame, hatred, depression and resentment, or you choose to let these losses be passages to something new, something wider, and deeper.” Henri Nouwen
When you plant a seed in the earth, the seed must die in part in order to bloom. The seed disintegrates while germination takes place, so it is a kind of death that requires earth, moisture, warmth and oxygen. It is the kind of death that usually brings new life with it.
Today I realized that for a long time I had been holding on the seed that I had planted in hope so long ago. Sure, I buried the seed so it could grow. But it was never dead to me and I never let go of it. Never let it touch the soil or the damp darkness of the earth. It simply lived on in my heart as did the expectation of that seed’s rebirth. I expected that when new life from the old – that the seed would be resurrected as it had been.
During the long wait and wondering why the seed had not yet bloomed, I realised my foolishness and error. I had buried my hand in the dirt along with the seed, and stay locked to the place I had been and given the seed no chance to emerge. So I pulled my fist from the earth, reburied the seed and took my hand back to myself.
I prayed for a bigger heart willingly to love deeply instead of the small, tight-held heart of my hand and that my eyes would open to whatever new things could now burst forth from that seed of my dream.
little seed, you have carried the hope of my soul
you have been my world, my all, my invested self
i have finally learned that burying you in the dark, damp ground
is the very task you were made for, that I was made for.
made to be buried, my confusion and sorrows
little seed, today you are gone down into the dirt and
i am empty handed again, bruised from holding you so tight
so long holding myself from the brink of homecoming
my pathway home, to the house of my father
the wide open, unknown but familiar embrace
is scattered with small burial mounds, hope filled moments
where I have learned to trust openhanded into the darkness
secretly I am burying myself, placing my too easily constructed
ideas into the earth to break down, shake out new strength
learning to breath in the big empty spaces
now that I am ready to be new.
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