Seeds

The biggest obstacle to entering into this space is the patience to trust.  Settling is tough, and it takes a while.  I had the opportunity to witness the outrageous spectacle of a desert bloom.  All the bleak, barren desert was transformed seemingly overnight into a wash of color as far as the eye could see.  Painted ladies, a beautiful orange and black tipped butterfly, appeared by the thousands.  A stretch of dead wasteland suddenly burst into life.  Millions of seeds, waiting dormant in expectation, suddenly became something new.  It was amazing.  There is a story in the Christian tradition of Jesus responding to the human propensity to worry.  "Consider the lilies of the field," he says.  "They neither toil nor spin, yet even Solomon in all his glory didn't encompass beauty like they do."  In other words, pay attention to the world around you.  Its cycles and seasons are as evident as the cycles and seasons in your own soul.  We are all made of the same stuff, and connected on a deep fundamental level.  Seeds lie dormant.  New growth takes time.  Take care of yourself, be gentle and nurturing, and the beauty will come.  Trust in the process.  In that there is hope.