Grow

 

 

April 12, 2021

 

Greetings from the roots,

 This week I was given a message, one of those things that I can sometimes ignore, or absorb into the plethora of other things that flicker across my consciousness.  I might have missed it completely, but I had help.   This morning I will share it with you, perhaps as a reminder.

 The message was: Grow.

 Like most of the best things that come to me, this word didn’t arrive in the traditional way.  In fact, I absorbed it over time; days actually passed before I realized what I was being shown. 

 Light grows into the day, sooner now than yesterday.  Morning shoos the evening back from the east, chases it across the sky, siblings above us, squabbling for a place in our life.   I am in love with the night and its mysteries, with the stars and their cousins the fireflies.  But there is a magic in the first light of morning that I was made for.  When it comes earlier, when it grows the day, I feel as if it is pouring more of that light into me.

 This was my first clue, one that I saw and didn’t absorb, even as people around me remarked how the season was changing.  I was distracted by what filled the days instead of what made them possible.

 Luckily, I have the birds to remind me.  I don’t know which songs belong to what birds, but some mornings, even as the dark embraced me, standing with my second cup of coffee out on the deck, I would hear them begin their conversations with the world.  Earlier.  More stridently.  In a couple of days, I realized they were asking to see who was awake.  And they were growing the day.

 I went running on almost every morning this week.  Geese flew over, laughing at whatever geese think funny, wandering across the sky, practicing geometry.  Other birds, late risers, those who may not seize the worm, sang solos, brought together choruses, made the morning sound into something more than it was. 

 The wind pressed between things, sighed against the pine needles, then found small places to whistle in.  It moved across the open places, carrying what will grow.  Some days the wind was the herald for storms, knotted clouds grumbling on the horizon, creating sinewed features where there was once only a simple line.

 The world grew wetter.  Some mornings it seemed as if it should rain, but the air declined to shed the moisture in any organized way.  Mist hung over the fields, ghosts of other storms, both rain and snow, escaping the soil’s grave.  Dew bent the blades of grass, glistening under the pink-grey sky, billions of bedazzled fronds.

 I ran by proud creeks, chattering in lilting voice about their growth.  Water, boldened by the snowmelt, pressing new shape to the banks of the brooks, splashing higher over rocks.  The water lept into the air, for a moment was beyond what streams can do, and then chuckled into itself again and went on to wherever was waiting. 

 I ran along the path that followed the river and was startled by the green filling the space around me.  The woods have changed from a stick museum to a forest, buds muscling the ends of every branch. Some trees sported traces of pink or white.  I was in awe.  How did this happen?  Is this the same life?

 Flowers, so easy to take for granted on some days, were heroes among the winter litter.  Patches of violets, a bold dandelion guard in the cracked sidewalk, little mobs of daffodils springing up in nonsensical places among the trees.  Pushing aside impossible to show the color they had growing in them.

 The sounds and smells, the feel of the air, the burgeoning plants.  The animals leapt and scurried, deer and rabbits, squirrels, all knowing the message, passing it on, then living their day.  Grow.

Some of it sunk in, finally.  I thought about what I knew, and what I had been told about how real growth happens.  What was common was that challenges, difficulties, setbacks, were what made growth possible.  I held these thoughts up against the fading winter, and the victory of spring.  Grow, the world said, open your eyes to this light, and see more and be more.

 In the last year we have been scraped and pushed and worn until we frayed.  Looking closely, I saw many people took moments to learn, and then grow.  Even now I see people creating and connecting, reading differently, finding other ways to know things.  Being uncomfortable, finding solutions anyway, trying new things, being disappointed, trying again.  Growing.  It may be that this time is an unprecedented opportunity for us all to grow.

 Every day has this potential, I suppose, but in this leading edge of spring, it is practically shouting at us.  Grow!  Find the way, small or large, to become more.  It is why you’re here.

 I came home from running, breathless and damp, and stood in my yard and looked again, saw the message.  The lawn is mostly invisible to me unless there is something to be filled or pulled out.  But there, decorated in glittering diamonds, I saw what nature conspired to say for weeks now. 

 There were brave tufts of grass, surging into the day above their neighbors.  As if they got the message first and wanted to show the way.  And show me.  This cluster of deep green shoots, towering over their peers, reaching into the morning air, toward the sky which grew lighter, to the world that grew more beautiful. 

 

Hope this finds you growing,

 

David

 

 

 

Copyright © 2021 David Smith