Sometimes, a word or image drops into my brain and won't let go. This week, it's the word becoming. Likely it has arrived because we stand on the brink of Spring, with life bursting forth into new expressions of itself everywhere we look. Of course, though these outer forms seem new, their essence has been there all along. Encased in womb or seed, or in energy drawn down into the wintering root of a mother plant, they were only biding time while working their magic away from our eyes.
Life just never stops. It is ever becoming, always about the business of flourishing and thriving. Even as a particular expression wanes and dies off, it does so in order to make way for new growth. This cycle is perpetual. New life comes into being, matures, grows old and dies off after having, in some way, nurtured the next generation.
While most species seem to have an affinity for this process, we humans have a harder time putting ourselves in sync with such natural rhythms. Certainly we appear to have a penchant for complicating things, complicated creatures that we are. Perhaps this is because we are here for another purpose altogether.
Particularly in this modern age, it seems our aim is to grow in awareness about how best to engage the world with meaning and purpose, a perplexing, even convoluted process at best. Various spiritual traditions confirm that this is just part of the human gig we've got going on. We are to grow ever more conscious of the choices we're making, using the free will given us to choose wisely, even when we can't see where those choices will lead.
My husband offered the perfect metaphor for this recently. On a late winter's night with a soothing fire burning in the hearth, we were talking about the new phase he feels himself moving into. "It's like I've been given a jigsaw puzzle," he explained, "but it came in a plain brown box. There's no picture on the cover to go by, and I need to connect the pieces without any idea what the final image will be."
Great, huh? And this metaphor works for all of us and at each stage or situation in our lives. We really don't know where a certain choice will lead or what the final outcome will be. Yet we must use the puzzle pieces given us and fashion from them some sort of unified whole. No one can tell us how to do it, or confirm that we are correctly shaping what will become that final creation.
And we have arrived back once more at the word becoming. A human life seems primarily about becoming oneself. There is such freedom in it, though at times that freedom can feel a bit like terror. How are we to negotiate such a course?
St. John of the Cross offers us a clue in the following words: “If a man wishes to be sure of the road he treads on, he must close his eyes and walk in the dark.” On the face of it, that might not sound particularly comforting, but let's look more deeply into his counsel.
He seems to be suggesting that another kind of sight~~and a truer one, as well~~will open up when we forgo our usual ways of perceiving the world. I appreciate St. John's confidence on our behalf as he reminds us that this purer sort of vision, an inner one, is our birthright and is available to help us recognize our path and to guide our feet as we walk upon it.
This suggests to me, too, that perhaps we're not so very different from the flora and fauna with whom we share the planet. We have the ability to know, just as they do, how to live the life that is ours by responding to the animating force coursing through us. While our walk through this world will likely still be more complicated than theirs, as we look with St. John's closed~eyed purity, we might be able to adopt his confidence that we will find our way forward.
As we see the natural world budding and unfurling in the weeks to come, we could remember that we, too, live that season. The enthusiasm that is Spring sings in our blood and in our bones, in our muscle and in the movement of our limbs.
In a recent interview, Krista Tippett remarked that "becoming fully ourselves is the work of a lifetime." And so, let's get on with it and in a big way. Let's take a huge leap forward, trusting that inner vision to guide us toward fullness.
A happy, happy Spring to you! Bud your little heart out, and unfurl that which is just itchin' to express itself through you. Let these be your gift to us all.
Bloomingly yours,
Leia
