THE LURE OF WEEDING
August 25, 2015
Alpine, AL
Nature is playing with my mind today. I am getting a lesson in just sitting and doing nothing. A day of no agenda stretches before me and MUST be filled...or I risk being overwhelmed with the creeping dread of whole minutes with no distraction. I acknowledge this dread as an old issue that needs attention...ok this won't be fun...OH WAIT, look at those weeds, the garden just can't wait, I tell myself . Knowing weeding is never taken lightly...it comes with determination and avoidance, dual driving forces...I now see avoidance is way out in front in this day's race. The next moment I breathe a grateful sigh as mounds of healthy, green weeds beckons me and poor self-reflection is shoved in my mind's old, ill-used trunk for long neglected things. With a secret grin for the hours of evasion that stretch ahead, I bend to start. Suddenly the sky darkens, and the rain patters all around. I duck under a shelter no more than a bench and tin roof...over the din of rain I hear the squeaking hinges as self-reflection shoves against the trunk lid. Before I know it I am sharing the bench with the feeling of enforced stillness that I've been dodging...I have never called it friend. While the rain drums over head, I squirm and avert my eyes ...preferring to watch the reflections bouncing in the puddles to what this interloper may reflect back to me. As the tension builds the rain suddenly stops and I bolt from the shelter grateful for my waiting weeds. Things are back to normal...I'm weeding once again...there I'm making progress, doing something needed, things are looking better, I stopped short of patting myself on the back only because of muddy hands. Then suddenly a dark, brooding cloud, radiating disappointment that I'm dodging this inner work, is looming over head. Back to the shelter and try again, I hear it rumble as it slings rain drops at the earth. This continues all morning, each time I try avoidance, nature counters with rain. Finally I give up, go inside, clean up and attend to what this day is demanding I learn. I hear the clanking noise as the wheel of life slows then stops...no longer covered by life's clatter the tape of old issues and commands booms into the silence. Back when I believed that they were mine, I tucked them in the stillness then covered them over with a busy life... but now exposed for me to understand, they surge forward then immediately begin to disintegrate with age and decay...what is left is quiet stillness...the place where the whispers of ideas and creativity first speak. I now call stillness a friend...out of the corner of my eye I see self-reflection smile and silently slip away as the sun breaks through the day...and the weeds, oh yes, still wait for me.
