I imagine two seeds talking to each other one day. They are both morning glory seeds–small, brown and very hard, usually. One of the seeds announces that it is ready for some serious change. It has decided that it is going to split open and let all that is inside fold out and up and down, that it’s going to change from dark brown to shades of green and even white.
The other seed is simply appalled. Why would you even think of tearing open your covering? The question almost sounds like an accusation. And, move up and down and out? Morning glory seeds don’t move at all. We are dry and hard and still. Green? Are you kidding me? That is an insult. We have always been brown. We have never gone green!
How could these two seeds be so different? How could one be so ready for change and the other not? How could the one be so willing to give up what it has always been? The difference, as I imagine it, is that the one seed, the one ready for change, has gone down deep into the soil, spent time in moisture and winter’s cold, surrounded and penetrated by minerals and nutrients that have softened its shell and awakened things inside it that it simply didn’t know were there. The other seed has been lying on top of the soil, in fact on top of some stones on top of the soil, untouched by much of anything. The changes it sees in the other seed don’t make sense. It has not had the experiences of the other seed and really cannot imagine, yet, that they can be anything good.
When changes show up in one near us, they very likely are the result of some deep places that he/she has gone and what experiences have penetrated their hardness, have called forth what was in them. Eventually, we all have those kinds of experiences. Our lives are seeds. We are sown into life all the time. Sowing means going down deep. Ultimately it changes us, and the changes, quite like those from a hard brown seed to a gorgeous morning glory, are hard to imagine, and amazing to see.
Bob Patrick
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