The first of the cosmos have come up, self-seeding from last year, and the year before, and….  Along with the zinnias, this summer’s haphazard garden is shaping up.  I walk to the shed to get the lawn mower, notice a tomato plant. Another dear plant has self-seeded and, for a moment, my heart skips a beat, reverence rooting in that pause.  It feels like all of these plants—the cosmos, the zinnias, the four o’clocks, the tomato—are self-seeding for me.  I know, of course, they’re not self-seeding for my benefit, are only doing what they do, which is to drop seeds, to trust that some will take, to carry on.  But, yes, I feel they’ve self-seeded just for me.  In some instances, isn’t it fine to pretend?

At the beginning of the week is the anniversary of my father’s death.  I have lived thirty-nine years without him.  I write this number in my journal, the number feeling important to note, roughly three-quarters of my life.  Three-quarters, seventy-five percent.  More without than with, this is the part that gets me.  I made peace with his passing long ago.  Still, there is pause every year, every summer on this day, a remembering of the little I can manage to remember, I was only twelve.

The days are steady and less harried.  The writing deadlines of the past two weeks have passed, pieces written, deadlines met.  It feels almost glorious to go to the grocery store and mow the lawn, to do each task without feeling rushed.  I think of people who work full-time and raise a family at the same time, how everything must be squeezed into the container of a week, a day, an hour.  We do what we must, we do what we know, we all get by.  Still, not for the first time, I feel gratitude for the rhythms of my life.  I do not live without challenges or stress or worry or work but I live comfortably, safely, and at a pace that is slower than many I know.  I want to remember this always, this gift, this blessing, this rhythm of my life, a circumstance, an experience, a way of being which I’ve worked to create, have extended effort toward, have given attention to.  I know the gift that is my life.

Within the span of two hours the morning sky moves from pink and pale blue softness to thick grey heaviness to washed-out blue brightness.  I think of rhythms—of a morning, a day, a week, a year, a life.  Things are a certain way, in a given moment, and then they change.  Change is the constant, transition always underway.  Do I open my heart to this experience of change and transition, or do I resist, shirk, shy away?  Do I pretend it isn’t happening?  Or do I choose the way of the cosmos, zinnias, four o’clocks, tomatoes?  That is, do I choose to tend my life, to give attention, to plant the seeds?  Do I trust in process? Will I carry on? Yes and yes and yes.

Unless I love something, it will not reveal itself to me.
~ Rudolf Steiner ~

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