Blossom-in-Place

Today is another impossibly beautiful spring day. I am here in south Seattle, a neighborhood called Top Hat. The world is in quarantine mode, shelter-in-place mode, and there is nowhere I would rather be but here at home.

My cherry tree is illuminated from behind by the morning sun. She is such a light-colored pink that she’s almost white, glowing against the blue sky. Her small, delicate petals cover the ground beneath her like snow. Yesterday I noticed a bumble bee flying low, its wing-beats lifting the petals in a circular fashion as it moved around. The hummingbirds are frequent visitors now.

We are living through an unprecedented time, globally. Never before has the entire human species been required to STOP doing so much of the unnecessary work we think we need to be doing on a daily basis.

I have longed for this mandatory shift in priorities for a very long time.

We are experiencing a major shift in consciousness. Our sense of place and time has been uprooted. It turns out our notion of needing to be at a certain location at a certain time is untrue. We are faced with a kind-of wild-west of consciousness. We tricksters can jump-in and usurp perception and priorities to create a more meaningful life on earth. This is the territory that artists and healers have always inhabited.

Now, we are operating on a fully global plane of existence.

Years ago, I had an appointment to meet in-person with a spiritual guide. For various reasons, I was unable to make it. He suggested we speak over the phone instead. I was resistant: How could he possibly get a read on my inner pulse if we were not in the same space together? He said that that idea, that separation, is an illusion, a construct. He was right. We all are here together, connected as one organism, right now. And, admittedly, a lot of us on Zoom now, too.

I value physical contact deeply. Anyone who knows me knows I go in hard for the real hugs. But how can we be physically present out in the world if we are not first present at home, with ourselves, with our families, with our garden, with our thoughts and with our feelings? This is a time of inner healing so that our external meetings, post-quarantine, have greater focus and meaning.

I recently saw a post that read something like: I feel like we’ve all been sent to our rooms to think about what we’ve done. That sentiment rings true to me. How much more running away from ourselves, avoiding our inner voices, avoiding any presentness, and denying our connection to the Earth can we possibly take?

No more. That’s how much.

Beans Green and Yellow

By Mary Oliver 

In fall
it is mushrooms
gathered in dampness
under the pines;
in spring
I have known the taste of the lamb
full of milk
and spring grass;
today
it is beans green and yellow
and lettuce and basil
from my friend’s garden -
how calmly,
as though it were an ordinary thing,
we eat the blessed earth.

from Swan: Poems and Prose Poems

I think of this poem often. Especially when I’m harvesting lettuce or chard for dinner. How I love the vegetal taste of the end of Oliver’s poem. How miraculous this life is here on Earth. How loving and nourishing Her whole great body. How generous on every level: physical, medicinal, allegorical, aesthetic.

How simple the things we need for our physical and spiritual nourishment.

This week I planted my garden:  lettuce, peas, chard, kale and corn.

Let us learn to blossom here in place.

Let us overthrow everything else and never return to the way things were.