A Meditation.

 

Is a seed meant to be a seed?

Is a seed’s destiny fulfilled if it stays in its hard shell, intact, complete, whole?

Is it content in its dormancy, oblivious in sleep?

Maybe.  Maybe. 

But how does the seed awaken? 

It drowns. 

It drowns. 

It drowns.

It softens. 

It cracks. 

It is torn asunder. 

It is destroyed.

Only then does something new emerge.  

Something greener, and more alive.  

This new thing; it digs, and burrows, as it surges forth from the old.

Sprouts root to anchor itself, but it does not stop there.

For its journey is upwards. 

 It searches, seeks, orients itself. 

 Hidden under, in the dark, how does it know which way is up?  For if it stays underground, it creates its own demise.

How does the seed know which way is up?

When it finally bursts from the bonds of  earth,

exploding unfettered from the soil,

 it is not pushed  from below but pulled from above.  

The sun draws this new thing to itself, and it grows and broadens and branches. 

 The tender, vulnerable shoot inches ever higher, ever closer.

The slight becomes full,

pale verdant

the malleable solid

 ‘til it is immense and broad,

rugged against howling winds, immovable, roots grasping the earth, leaves singing aloft,

 the home of birds, the food of squirrels,  protection for the exposed.  

It reaches higher, a bridge.

This strange journey is not one from young to old,

 but from old to new,

From inert to alive.  

Not from here to there, but from this to that.

 The seed is no longer merely of the earth, but also of the heavens.

If the seed holds on too tightly to itself, it stays a seed.

It can only live fully if it is willing to die.