“New seed is faithful. It roots deepest in the places that are most empty…
I am certain that in every fallow place, new life is waiting to be born anew.”
~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes
In the past few years I have been fascinated by seeds. How they hold all that is necessary for new life in their small closed chambers. How they carry a deep and ancient wisdom. I think of how seeds are buried ~ and yet it is a burial toward new life. They rest and wait in the dark soil until the air and the sun and the rain and the winds reach their tenuous agreement and the conditions are right. Then, in some kind of mysterious breaking open, new life begins to emerge.
What seemed lost is found. All bargains of disappearance and smallness and silence are broken as life transgresses the boundaries of that old container and reaches for what it needs.
But seeds need emptiness. They need fallow ground. They need stillness.
So often these are the places in our lives that we run from. Sometimes when we see those empty places, we see only the shadows and shapes of what has been lost. We sense only the absence of what has burned to the ground. Or maybe we sense only our disappointment over what we had hoped would fill that space, we feel the hollowness of emptiness. This sorrow is real and must be honored. And also…
This is where the faithful seeds of new life hideaway and wait. I know for myself I don’t always feel this truth in those moments. And yet, it is what Nature shows us. This is our nature.
As we each sit in the fallow fields of our lives at this time, I hope we will find ways to hold both the sorrow of the emptiness as well as the faith in the invisible seeds waiting there. That even in those difficult spaces, we will sense the rumbling of deep roots growing beneath us and dream of the day when that new life will spring out of the soil and astonish us with its presence and beauty.