THE BEAT GOES ON
Our back yard is carpeted with morning glory sprouts. They’re coming out of every space between the pavers, every pot, every patch of dirt. Also in random clumps of debris and piles of leaves that have accumulated in the corners. It’s like a jungle — I almost expect to encounter a toucan back there. And it’s a most rare sight in a yard that’s usually so sun-baked that it demands twice-a-day watering for anything to grow in the summer,
Thank you to that delicious week and a half of early monsoon rain.
I do feel kind of sad for all these wee wanna-be morning glories. We are not going to water every inch of the yard like the rainfall did. So unless the storms return quicker than weather predictions say they will, and unless the downpour continues a lot more regularly than we’ve seen it in decades, most of these bitty sprouts aren’t going to make it.
Yesterday, I was bemoaning the fact that they’re almost certain to wither and die. I said to Travis, “I wish I could tell them to wait, that the time isn’t right, those rains were a tease, there won’t be enough water for them to continue…”
He replied, wise and ever practical, “When the conditions are right, you can’t stop a seed from sprouting.”
That struck me as a sermon about something. I don’t know what, exactly. But I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to write about this week, anyway, so I’m going to start with the idea and see where we go…
When the conditions are right, you can’t stop a seed from sprouting.
To me, this offers something about simply letting Life happen. Trusting the Creative Urge, that it will find a way to express. The conditions are right, they must be right, for everything that is occurring now. The seeds were planted before. If I don’t love what’s currently sprouting, maybe it’s a reminder to be more intentional about what I’m sowing for the future.
Maybe it’s also about not holding on so tight, releasing some of my need for certainty and control. Life is irrepressible. Of course, I still always have the opportunity to tend my garden, bringing care and commitment to watering and weeding, nurturing the parts that I want to cultivate on purpose. But part of our partnership with Life must always include allowing it to go and grow where it will and how it will. We couldn’t contain it all if we tried.
So it also involves a big measure of surrender and faith. Surrender to the process, to the fact that it’s always a collaborative creation. And faith in the timing and placement and rhythm of a whole world’s involvement.
And while it may not be possible to eliminate completely my anxiety about having enough or being enough down the road, the more that I can let go of such fruitless worries, the better I can appreciate everything that is, in fact, becoming right now.
Our movie project, Vamp, is premiering this Saturday. I’m really excited because I think it turned out great, it’s very funny. And I’m also a nervous wreck because it’s about to be utterly out of my hands. Is it the right thing? Is this the right time? Will it be the right audience? Should my curtain speech be a lengthy explanation of what we were hoping to accomplish, or an apology for what I fear will be perceived as shortcomings? Should I beg for forgiveness?
[Absolutely not, I know, but I can’t help running through every possibility in my head.]I’ve got to let the sprout grow. It will find its way — maybe how I think it should, and maybe some other way. Maybe it won’t stick around very long, but will have been part of creating the perfect conditions for whatever’s next. I don’t know, I can’t know, and I don’t need to know.
That sounds something like freedom, so maybe this will be a July 4th talk after all.
The Freedom of Independence — the sprout’s self-determination, and the independence of my creative intentions. Along with the Freedom of Inter-dependence — trusting life, trusting each other, trusting the Ever-Loving Everything. Practicing faith in a remembrance that we neither must we do it alone, nor could we.
See you this weekend, Friends! Sunday service 10:00am at Maple Street Dance Space. XO, Drew
©2022 Drew Groves
