Fallow Ground, Breaking Up

"Jesus referred to the earth as being automatic - it brings forth itself.  In any case, when a seed is planted in the soil, if the seed is healthy and the conditions of soil and climate generally satisfactory, then it sprouts.  Life becomes manifest.  There seems to be available to the seed, at a point in time, all the energy and vitality it can accommodate in its unfolding.  It should follow, then, that if the conditions are not met the energy is not available.

...Energy is available for the seed or organism - but under certain given conditions.  It does not matter how simple or complex they are, or how self conscious or lacking in any kind of consciousness; the process itself has to be followed.  In the following, in the obedience to the process, the discipline is apparent.  It does not matter what variation there may be in the way the means of life are channeled into the organism or living cell, but they must be channeled if life is to continue, and within very definite lines, according to observable conditions.

...A particular form of life is committed to a way of survival, a way of keeping alive.  When this no longer operates, when the line of communication is broken and the organism is cut adrift, death is automatic." 

~Howard Thurman, Disciplines of the Spirit 


Fallow Ground
In life we often tack unconscious requirements upon the heart of another with the expectation that they have the ability to read invisible memos.  It isn't until we notice the inadvertent yet subtle cruelty of tacking unacknowledged hopes upon the innermost being of another - puncturing over and over again because we've neglected to give due attention to our own insecurities and deeply repressed pain.  When we are unaware of ourselves we are unaware of others.  Underneath it all lurks the great lie, a garter snake among weeds speaking with a fork-tongued drawl, "You are not able. You are not worthy of Love."

Today is Sunday.  A myriad of feelings are present with me - relief, regret, acceptance, hope, fear, doubt, loss, empathy, failure, humility, repentance, courage, and reverence but the greatest among them all is Love.

Choosing to say yes to The Most High often means disrupting the norm...removing us from a place where we have become firmly packed in generational patterns, comfortable illusions, and the settled ground of inner defenses - states of being that have ill served our adult life.  Our lives become hard, arid...a dry land lacking in the give that allows for the absorption of minerals, truth and love.  The neglected and abandoned mind, heart, and spirit will not bear fruit...render a sweet return.
 

Breaking Up
Fertile soil is created.  It is created by The Most High, the power that works in us all by plowing, rooting up, aerating, tossing away stumbling stones and cutting away the thistle - clearing and Preparing The Way by bringing us utterly to our knees.  We are a barren land until we are able to be thankful for reproof and cease resisting, frustrating the process of divine cultivation.

I am learning.  I am growing in the knowledge of Christ - to lose my life, as I once knew it, is to gain life more abundantly.

Breaking up the fallow ground hurts.  Oh, it hurts.  It hurts.  It hurts.  But I must allow myself to feel.  The only way out is to go through and press on even as my heart aches.  I must press...we must press because we are but one part of a bountiful end.  The enlargement of Grace is bigger than us.  A harvest is never simply for the solitary redeemer - one moment in time or one woman and one man.  The germination of change and its harvest nourishes the begotten of the first dispensation and the generations.

Today the sun is shining.  It is a good day to plant.

I do not fully know what is before me.  My my, I am afraid.  Yet with trembling hands I ask, "Most High, please meet me at the place of my need" as I surrender a mustard seed into the earth.

Let it be so...

 

Parable of the Sower

"Plant the good seeds of righteousness, and you will harvest a crop of love. Plow up the hard ground of your hearts, for now is the time to seek the LORD, that he may come and shower righteousness upon you."

~Hosea 10:12

Thank you, Change

Lately life has been a doozy.  It forced change upon me like a thief in the night.  And now I am left wondering where all of my heirlooms of sweet memories  have gone.  Probably in a pawn shop somewhere, huh.  I'll retrieve them, buy them back later.  Maybe and then again maybe not.  For now, I am grateful for the change.  I am grateful because now I realize that those heirlooms were merely costume and often subtly wrought with dross.  They were not pure gold.  

Most High,
Thank you for loving me.  
Thank you for preparing me and showing me that I am worthy of better.

“All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
is Change.

God
is Change.” 

~Octavia E. Butler

Confession #219

Pain.
You never know its purest form
its chemical makeup
until you have loved
loved then caged
loved then set free
loved and flied
loved and come into the knowing
that time is nothing but a loop back south
to a barred home
with scattered seeds at its base

~Wife

 

I Give My Hands Permission

 

I saw this quote yesterday.  I saw it and thought about all of the instances in which I have deleted or thrown away something I have written as a means to protect.  I mulled over all of the times that I have muted myself or allowed others to censor me so that they could burrow and hide.  Changing the phrasing...changing word choice...changing the tone...changing the names of people and places was not enough.  They were discomforted.  And I did not want to offend.   

But this quote allowed me to ask myself...rather than who am I protecting, what am I am protecting?  Why am I abetting, fearing the grime and grit?  We isolate and negate our own experiences for the benefit of ego and image yet to the detriment of our own spirit.  I perceive that this kind silence blasphemes against our Highest Good.  I've learned that fallibility is not damning, hubris is.

Why do we give shelter to destructive behavior...whether our own, someone else's or even generational and communal patterns?  I believe the greater question may be...why are we afraid to speak the truth?  Why are we afraid of our own voice? 

They could have behaved better but they made the conscious choice not to do so.  I recognize that I have often been culpable of the same.  In the way of a newly initiated Ancestor, Maya Angelou, my goal is not perfect living but rather honest living.  My song is mine to sing, not yours to cage.  And well, my hands were made for writing...

Ase`