The Power of the Pause - Meb

        Consider this: Over the last  six weeks, Joan, Katie and I were down for the count, although there is no comparison between what Joan experienced with her bike accident, Katie's emergency surgery and my walking pneumonia. How quickly life can turn upside down, and how grateful I am that our outcomes were not worse.

          The very act of staying prone in bed during the day forced a certain type of reverie that is uncommon for me. One thing led to another and when I could literally breathe again I also found myself looking at life in a slightly different way. 

          During my "pneumonia pause," it occurred to me that when we take a time out from our busy lives, new ideas and ways of being can germinate. From author Hope Jahren, I learn that most seeds wait for at least a year before starting to grow. Some, like the cherry seed can wait for hundreds of years. What are they waiting for I wonder? Do seeds have a second sense that says "this is the year?" How are we humans the same, or different?

         I think about what is ready to burst forth in me. Do I have latent dreams or wishes in my heart, parts of me I've held back, hoping for just the right conditions to be born into the world? People say that as long as you are alive, there is always potential; now this message has greater meaning. Like that seed that doesn't look alive, its energy contained within an outer shell, I think about what I've hidden, even from myself.

          A couple of years ago I became a Master Gardener, though one would never guess it given the current state of my garden. Strangely, I am in no hurry to remedy the situation. Underneath those leaves and downed limbs from winter storms lies a magical world just waiting for warmer weather to start an explosion of new life. I trust this new life is there; in fact, I count on it. Just below the surface, every seed is waiting for just the right conditions to burst open.
         
          Our world community is being forced to pause. Resilient solutions are clearly beyond what is available in our self-help books, personal growth seminars or any individual packet of "Secret" sauce. We are being asked to acknowledge our interdependence like never before. Like many of you, I am experiencing what it is like to be living in a kind of "underground" state, in unfamiliar terrain.

          I think there is power in this pause.

          Just like what is happening in my garden, there are little bits of green dreams lying under the surface in each of us that can be born into our world, even under these less than optimal conditions. What wishes for beauty have been hidden, like my seeds, just waiting to burst open in the light? What new ways of connecting, collaborating and working with, instead of against, one another are possible? What can this time of hardship, of tragedy, teach us about ourselves, about our communities, about who and what is important?

          There is grace and there are miracles present in the hundreds of selfless every day and heroic acts that put the good of the world above the good of the one. They are beautiful and deserve to be celebrated.

          My garden, the world garden, looks like a mess right now, it's true. But I believe in miracles, and as surely as I know anything, Spring will come. (Meb)