While Anything is Possible

The day began, crisp and sunny - sunny enough that the brightness upon the greenhouse was already blunting the crispness inside.  Stepping inside, into this wholly other world of moist and evocative fecundity, I stood for a moment once the door closed behind me to simply inhale the air of promise.  And to be encouraged by it.  Removing the lids protecting the trays we populated yesterday with seeds, I had to reassure myself that despite the naked appearances, just slightly beneath that surface of potting soil are, indeed, nestled the promissory notes of harvest - tiny packets of DNA and know-how already beginning to soften with the rainwater I sprinkle on; already stirring with the warmth and the dark; already aching to stretch upward into the light.

Just beneath the surface.

I can’t get too carried away.  I know from sobering experience that not every seed grows; not every promise is kept; not every potential grows to fruition.  Some simply smolder in their dormancy, and remain there beneath the soil -

-like words unspoken;

-notes unplayed;

-letters not mailed.

Perversely, it’s tempting to focus on them - the blank blocks in the tray - rather than those out of which a stem, tiny and fragile, is already protruding.   There is yet time.  It's still early.  Seeds, after all, exist in a time beyond my own - “kairos”, the Greek word for that intangible and inscrutable “right time”, rather than “chronos”, that metronomic click of “clock time.”  I can manage the externals - the water and warmth and light - but the internals are beyond my reach.  We might wince at the comparison, but like the gardeners who sow them, not every seed realizes its potential.  

Even then not all is lost.  The unsprouted seed simply dissolves into the soil where it becomes part of the nourishment for other seeds.  

Having tended, then, indiscriminately to both the stretching and the silent - unable at this stage to assess what is won and what is lost - I refill the water jugs for next time and latch the door behind me, stepping back into the sunny crispness of the morning.  Midway back toward the house I pause with a nagging provocation, and take another lingering look behind me and consider again the wonder of what is happening inside that nurturing space.  

Coaxing.

Nurturing.

Protecting.

Germinating.

And I ponder what all might be stirring in those other fertile spaces of these days...

...in the opportune conversations;

...on the blank pages;

...in the quiet moments;

...in the prayers of the day;

...in the seeds, just beneath the surface;

...in these moist and fecund days while anything is yet possible.