Awesome Seeds

I didn't do well in elementary school because I was out the window. That tendency to be looking outside caught up with me in fourth grade when we had to master multiplication and division tables. Everyday was an utter pit-in-the-stomach-nerve-wracking-depressive hell. Once a week we had finger-nail inspection: hands flat out on our desks and she'd say publicly: "Stephen, stop biting your nails." And I'd think: "I'd be able to stop biting my nails if you'd throw out your flash cards."

But there were two things wonderfully redemptive of fourth grade: every day after lunch the overhead fluorescent lights were turned out and the teacher would read Stuart Little or Charlotte's Web to us. I was mesmerized and felt sad when she'd mark the page and close the book. And then one day, janitors brought in two long lunch tables and set them up in the middle of the room. Pushing our desks closer to each other to make space for the mystery unfolding - so began weeks of learning about plant propagation. 

We placed bean seeds in glass jars which were lined with wet paper towels; the seeds suspended for our observations. We all brought in small bags of soil from home and planted more beans in our cut down half-pint milk containers (1950's recycling!) Cuttings from geranium and snake plants were rooted in large trays of wet yellow sand. A huge avocado seed was suspended with tooth picks over a glass of water. We cut up potatoes and planted the eyes in soil. Best of all we planted pole string-beans in huge buckets of soil and made stick tepees for their support. The seeds grew and even flowered. It was all too wonderful: studying seeds and roots; and I was hooked.

In the late 19th century, Celia Thaxter wrote An Island Garden in which she wrote: "The very act of planting a seed in the earth has in it to me something beautiful. I always do it with a joy that is largely mixed with awe." 

Seeds are awesome miracles of transformation and evolution: this tiny thing packed with potential, color, fragrance, food and delight. The awe is intensified when (with larger seeds anyway) you see the ground start to crack or heave up just before the new plant emerges and the tightly packed leaves unfold to light and air.

I just read the introduction to a gardener's autobiography that says we should just appreciate plants for themselves and be done with any kind of parable or symbolism for our own living. I don't necessarily agree with that. Why can't we do both, if without too much of a stretch the connections come to mind. When God made us, we were first put in a garden (kind of planted ourselves) surely for our delight, but also that we might learn about God and ourselves. Maybe some people just don't believe in God and they don't like anything that suggests otherwise.

So yeah, seeds are awesome as they sprout, and God wants us to emerge and open up as well. God wants our transformation. Indeed, real living is about transformation. God wants us to realize who we are and what we have within us to become.