Life Persists

This morning was one of those tap your heals together kind, when you walk out to the garden to find the seeds you planted last week have germinated perfectly. Strait green lines all the way down the beds. Birth, hope, excitement and then fear. The fear is the voice in my head that says “now all I have to do is keep this stuff alive three more weeks, or eight more months until it becomes food……in Oklahoma” Ha! No easy task. It’s a miracle I can get anything to grow. But life persists, seeds sprout defiantly, popping out of the soil tall and bright and motivated to live. I try to be there for them, give them what they need and try to have some kind of a mutually beneficial relationship.

Quiet early morning walks through the garden are times for reflection. What I’m doing right what I’m doing wrong, what comes next and am I even qualified to answer those questions? Seeing all the seeds that have germinated give me some inkling I’m on the right track, but I’ve had plenty of disappointments too. But it’s time to look at things in a different light.

What would happen if I could overcome my attachments to things, results, outcomes? What if I could be completely present in the awe of such things as germinating seeds, in spite of any sad news or the possibility of disappointing outcomes. What if I could accept the possibilities? Would I always be happy and full of blissful joy? Never sad, never disappointed? Is that too Buddhist monk like to consider? I hear even the monks have their little spats and controversies.

But I crave the silence of the dialog in my head that separates me from the germinating seeds.
I have a little prayer I guess you could call it, that I say to myself when I become distracted by things I really don’t need to be. When I feel I’m letting myself go down the rabbit hole of angst and insecurity and start worrying about things that I have absolutely no control over.

“Let me not be separated from you, the sky, the sun, the soil

Let me not be separated from your immense protection and grandeur” ect..

And I go on and on until I’m not separated anymore. Sometimes it takes longer and sometimes just the words” let me not be separated” will do the trick.

What separates me from the present are always things that I have no control over, obviously the weather, what other people say or think and my own unrealistic expectations of myself. This may sound ridiculous and hopefully funny but I worry about growing and raising food so much that I hardly leave time to actually do it. Okay that might be an exaggeration. But do you know what I mean? When all along I could be present in the experience of doing it. Instead I’m worried sick about the outcome. It’s funny to me even and at least I am aware and awake to what it is I’m doing, which I suppose is my saving grace for growing and making little adjustments in my thinking as need be.

But today I have germinating seeds, lots of them. I have soil that is ready to be planted. Beds that need to be hoe’d and a day that deserves my attention and appreciation. In spite of myself I, like the seed continue to persist.