Sprout

I've been worried that my kids might have inherited my brown thumb. I cannot seem to grow plants to save my life.

Pascal has been painstakingly saving his apple seeds at lunch every day. He wants to sprout the seeds and grow an apple tree.

Usually, he forgets and throws them out when dumping the trash out of his lunchbox.

Or loses them.

Or puts them on the counter next to the sink and someone else pops them into the composter.

One day he remembered, and we wrapped them in damp paper towel and stored them in a baggie and a seed actually sprouted, strong and astonishing ... but that was thrown out by the next person to clean the kitchen.

So a few weeks ago when he finally remembered at every step, we wrote SEEDS SPROUTING, DO NOT THROW OUT! on the baggie and tucked it on the window sill.

Today, we checked it for life, and wonder of wonders, a slim and scraggly green shoot was waiting for us.

Pascal was in raptures.

He called everyone to see it, carefully extricated it from the paper towel, placed it in a shot glass and set it on the window sill.

"You should pray for it now," suggested Vava, hovering over his shoulder, and he did.

And my heart flowed while my baby asked God to not let anything bad happen to his baby, and to help it grow. 

"How does it happen?" Vava asked, "how does the seed turn into the sprout?"

In spite of my long history of killing plants, but I tried to answer. "There's life inside, and when it has the right conditions to grow, it bursts out and reaches for them - water, and sunlight, and warmth," I said. "It drinks them in and transforms them into more life."

And of course, I was looking at my own little seedlings, grown taller and lovelier than I could have imagined. The life inside of them stretching and growing, reaching for sunlight and fresh air and love, for food food and kindness and care. And I, too, pray over them as they stretch out and up, and I rejoice absurdly over each new achievement.

And I see you too.

I see you, friend, with your busyness and your family and your hard work, and I see how you still tend the seeds that fill your life with colour. I see you picking up that paintbrush, that notebook, that guitar. I see you staying up late to tend to your own sprouts, trying something new, making life burst out where only seeds had been. 

I see you daring to hope that seed will sprout this time, when so many seeds have failed before. 

Making your patch of dirt bloom is beautiful and ordinary and holy.

May God bless you and protect you as you grow your one wild and wonderful life.

For my friends, at sunset

After a few very busy and trying days, I was driving home and trying to keep my brain awake. The radio was boring and I was all alone and had nothing to listen to and no one to talk to and suddenly I was stuck by the beauty of the sky. My breath caught. 

The colours weren't brilliant - soft orange and purple. The orange was a creamy sorbet, and the purple was the exact shade that too-ripe blackberries leave on your fingers. And, my attention caught by the colours, I noticed a flock of birds flying above them in the gold and blue sky, silhouettes of summer to come. Then, for the first time this year, I saw the sweet spring green of new leaves swaying from a willow tree.

I felt like I'd just been given new eyes.

I'd driven by that willow tree five times today, and I'm sure it had been no less lovely. But I didn't see it until I'd been pulled out of myself by the sunset.

The women I work with are amazing. I know they are lovely. I know they are kind. We work together every day and I see their patience and resilience and thoughtfulness with the kids week after week.

Yesterday I got a flat tire, and they all jumped in to help keep my day running. One used her break time to pick up my kids after school. One stayed late to give a lift home in the rain after a meeting. The others offered to help me get to school in the morning. Another friend picked up my daughter from cheer practice.

Last week our toilet broke, and we couldn't find a plumber who was available this week. One brought her plumber husband over right away to fix it. 

And, like the sunset with springtime glory, my car trouble and broken toilet brought their kindness, their generosity, into sharp focus. 

What a gift you are, my friends. You are lovelier than sunsets, and I am so grateful for all of you. Your beauty lights up the world.

Sympathetic Resonance

 In one of my facebook groups, a blogger brought up a question: why blog anymore? There isn't really a thriving community of bloggers and readers anymore. It's true for me at least - I sometimes click on a blogpost if I see a link on Facebook or twitter, but (apart from two that email me frequent fresh posts) I don't seek out blogs to follow and read regularly. I write sporadically.

When I was in Zambia, one thing that never failed to catch my heart was the singing. At church, the entire congregation sang. Some held the melody, strong and true, while harmonies swelled and swept around it like a murmuration of starlings, some high and some low and all soaring free. Sometimes the leader would sing out the first few words of the next verse just when the previous one was ending because not everyone had a hymnbook. This made for a call-and-response feel that whorled and looped and at the end of the song I'd be a little out of breath and just lost in the wonder and glory of so many different notes sung at once and still sounding so so so good.

 A few years ago I learned about sympathetic resonance. Key-notes.com describes it as "An acoustic phenomenon that helps make a piano sound beautiful ... If we play a note on the piano, other compatible notes vibrate in sympathy as long as there are no dampers to, well, put a damper on them."

And the congregation in our church in Zambia had that nailed down. Sympathetic resonance. Singing together for years, trained since childhood to listen to each other, the melody, the harmony, the rhythm, the mood ... and to join in.  I wish I could be there now.

But sympathetic resonance isn't just for pianos and really good acapella singing. 

For me, it's why I blog. There's something inside that longs to be heard and echoed back. It's why I share (or overshare) the raw or tender things, the silly things, the embarrassing or boring or any sort of things ... 

Because of that resonance in the heart when someone nods and says, "same." When someone says, "I needed to hear that," or "I thought I was the only one." It doesn't always echo back. It doesn't resonate with everyone. 

But the little vibration of harmony when it does - 

the sympathetic resonance -

is glory.