Heroes Not Zombies

I tend to associate new growth with the Spring, but, these crocus plants popped up from under the soil through the month of December. I took this photo on December 24th last year, and so far, on the 6th December, as I write this, there is no sign of them yet.

But that just reminds me – that creation is going on all the time. The phase, or season, or time of new and emergent growth is not limited to the Spring. It’s not limited to any single season, any particular month, or even any specific day.

We have a great tendency to chop the flow of life into pieces. We did that when we invented measured time – by making clocks and “time pieces” with their minutes and their hours. We weren’t even satisfied to stop there, but chopped the minutes into seconds, driving everything faster and faster, measuring this thing we call time in ever shorter, ever smaller units.

The thing is – those units are a human invention. Time flows in Nature. It flows continuously, the way a river does. Time is experienced by each of us in different ways. It flies past when we are enjoying ourselves, drags when we are bored, can’t pass quickly enough when we want to escape. However, the one constant is…..time is continuous. And so is creation.

The other thing this image provokes in my mind is how much is going on that we just don’t see. Are these crocus bulbs lying sleeping, unmoving, unchanging under the dark soil, then in a flash they turn into green shoots stretching towards the Sun? Nope, it’s not like that. But life often seems like that to us because we invent disconnections. In reality change, growth, development, maintenance, on the one hand, and dis-integration and dying on the other, are happening all the time, and all at once. They don’t fall into nice neat boxes. Nothing in life does.

I like the feelings which arise when I think of this – I like the focus on flow, on continuity, connectedness, on the whole, on change, and on invisibility. They bring me joy, delight, and wonder. Hey….so do little crocus plants shooting up from under the black earth!