So ends a weekend full of fall’s bounty and invitations…for me, the proper response is gratitude: for friends, for family, for 4-legged companions, for the mystery of life we enter, and for the meaning we co-create in community.
Early Saturday morning, my husband and his friend, Scott, helped me plant over 160 tulip bulbs (wonderful bulbs, from www.AmericanMeadows.com).
They dug, and I placed and covered the bulbs with a silent blessing for their peaceful rest and eventual vernal emergence, when all creation rises to the light. I like to plant in groups of five; certainly, this is in keeping with the elements of formal design, but for me, it also ensures the bulbs will rest in community: fragile companions nestled together during the time of fertile darkness, while cold winter winds and gentle–or fierce–snows swirl above their earth-womb, and safeguard their needed gestation.
And so, too, my own spirit is led downward to the coming darkness and cold of autumn and towards the solitude and centering of winter, where losses may be recounted and griefs healed, and where seeds of hope and dreams of growth may be harbored, incubated, and cradled. I’m gathering in the lessons of the year: winnowing, discarding, and laying out the questions I want to plant for winter discernment. Like the bulb’s requirements for transformation, this is best done deeply and in stillness, and never without community. Phillip, the 4-leggeds, friends, gardens, everything in every moment–my relationships with all–reveal myself to me. For each of us, whatever vulnerable potential will bloom into light requires co-creation and the support of community. Our growth is never done in isolation. We collaborate in fashioning the questions with all of creation, in awareness or not, and within these relationships we refine the paths where the questions lead…
Together, Phillip, Scott, and I joined the dance of co-creation with Mother Earth, planting hope and joining our energies with the web of nature, connecting with life’s eternal circle. Planting seeds is always a co-creation and collaboration with mystery, as is a life lived consciously.
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