Time To Wonder
Photo Credit: Aziz Acharki
I am weathered by this year, by these universal reckoning days. I am arrested by death and injustice blowing in and bringing hail and wind and grief pounding my roof until the rain mixes with my tears. But let’s be honest I am pretty sure we have been outrunning this type of communal truth-telling for a really long time, and we are more than due.
I had a dream last week, a spiritual dream, about a half-planted garden. The dream had that honeysuckle way of lingering in my psyche well into my third cup of coffee. When I started to get curious about the spiritual significance of the images a pathway began to emerge, could this be as Dr. Martin Shaw suggests - an Initiation.
“Because (the initiation) is not something curated by deeply prepared human beings, but by the earth. Much wilder, even more uncertain.”
Photo Credit: Martin Shaw
Back to the dream, a half planted vegetable garden - what could that mean? After some research and soul searching I believe the dream was speaking about a season of taking stock of spiritual needs and the need for nourishment. I have found myself asking “where is my garden half-full?” and “what will sustain me?”
There have been a few embers whispering possibility towards me, but nothing as boisterous as the choir of dead things in my yard. Sadly, a number of trees and shrubs did not survive the winter and have been cut down. Some of the trees were planted by my hands and others are over 50 years old. These ironies is not lost on me.
So when the Earth decides to administer it’s authority in your own dream life and in your own backyard, it could be an invitation to wonder again.
It is time to get curious.
It is time to sit down and give our undivided attention to the Earth as it unfurls, rages, quakes, dries up, overflows, rumbles, and refuses to be consumed by us.
It is time to listen, really listen, to the realities of injustice, agony, and enslavement that our beloved friends of color carry.
It is time to acknowledge our children are afraid and angry to be inheriting a broken planet that is shuddering and creaking under the weight of our colonization.
It is time to listen to old stories, to seek out ancient paths, to open ourselves to be soul-led, to star gaze, to feel small again.
It is time to let the engine of the universe teach us how to be restoration-agents who traffic in redemption and resurrection rather than consumption and competition.
The initiation is right here in front of us so we might find a new name and begin to discover a new story that we are willing to tell about ourselves.
Onward friends.
