Quite Encouraged (in a small way)

This early Sunday morning, my tiny seedlings glow a vibrant green under the fluorescent grow lights a few feet from where I sit writing these words. The cosmos seedlings are the already stars of the lot. One day, they will bear a profusion old-fashioned flowers on lacy greenery easily soaring five or six feet above the garden bed. They now stand a lordly three inches tall. Already I’m concerned that they may outgrow my improvised greenhouse before the weather is warm enough to transplant them into the garden.

The pansies that will one day be profusion of fragrant purple blossoms, are now just four tiny leaves. Invisible stems holding these tender green engines just a millimeter above the damp soil of their plastic four-packs. I’ve never grown them from seed and I wonder how they will find their way from here to there.

I’m most excited about my lavender seedlings. (Munson – an English variety) I dream of a patch of lavender at the top of the waterfall in the Temple garden. It’s lush and full of light blue blossoms and smells heavenly. Right now however, my lavender patch is in two four-inch pots, each containing nine or ten thread-like stalks a quarter inch tall. On top of each spindly stalk are two tiny leaves, a little larger than pinheads. Not a very promising start, but between my amazement that these minuscule seeds of black grit actually sprouted and my fertile imagination, I’m quite encouraged.

Everything You Encounter Is Your Life

In this time of rising health and economic crisis, it is easy to see our lives as an endless succession of challenges. From one perspective, this is true, but it is not the only truth. No story we tell about our lives can match the fullness of what it means to be alive. Of course, stories are necessary (and wonderful), but we need to be skillful about noticing what story we are telling ourselves and whether that story is actually helping us or simply exhausting us.

One of the problems with the ‘succession of challenges’ view of life is that it places the emphasis on the ‘getting through’ rather than on what is possible right where we are. While it can be useful to imagine a time when you won’t be as challenged as you are now, this can also lead us to a kind of partial living. ‘Right now, I’ll just keep my head down and try to get through this. When things settle down, then I’ll breathe easy and appreciate my life.’

These are extraordinarily challenging times. We are having to learn new patterns of social engagement and economic uncertainties beyond anything most of us have ever imagined. As we move through the mechanics of our day – breakfast, lunch and dinner – we spin through endless scenarios of futures of disaster and salvation. This is normal and not at all a problem.

Today, I’d simply like to suggest and alternate perspective to the true story of ‘succession of challenges.’   I first read this in a book by 20^th century Zen Master Uchiyama: “Everything you encounter is your life.”

The circumstances of the moment – both internal and external are the only thing you ever have. These circumstances are mostly uncontrollable, constantly changing and are guaranteed to be uncomfortable at times. (Sometimes wildly uncomfortable.) When we begin to accept these rather obvious realities, we can perhaps begin to be a little more at ease right where we are.

‘Everything you encounter is your life’ invites us to not put off our life for some other time when things ‘settle down.’ Instead of trying to fix and control and get through, we can turn our attention to being with and appreciating what is already here.

So, in the midst of anxiety and uncertainty – in the midst of discomfort and fear, can we take the actions we need to take to stay safe and connected, and can we also take the time to look around – to breathe and smell and taste and touch – to appreciate the tiny green buds that are just now coming to the crab apple tree and the rising energy of the daffodils as they prepare to release their golden trumpets to celebrate the returning sun.