You are precious in your fragility

I am starting the plants for my garden this year, with deeper reverence, than is even usual.

For the seeds.

For the soil.

For the water.

The air.

The sun.

For this body, and the bodies I am entrusted to feed and protect.

James Finley has this teaching, where he suggests that everyone hold their breath for about 5 minutes, and then exhale. Quite quickly, everyone realizes the teaching. 

That every breath is a gift.

The average amount of days any of us have are just over 27,000.

27,000 days. The blink of an eye.

I have already lived 14,845 days.

Being in the material world… being matter… makes us vulnerable.

Our days are like grass. We bloom like a flower in the field. The wind passes over us, and we vanish, (Psalm 103).

Is this at least part of what it means to “consider the lilies of the field”?

Fear causes us to hurt other people. Even at the best of times.

We too often fail to realize that all of this is a gift.

That we come from gift and are returning to gift.

And we live this great gift out in such fear, that fear is perhaps living our lives more than we are.

Experiencing rejection, especially as children, makes us feel even more vulnerable, and can heighten our fight or flight senses.

In the song I Believe You, the children’s choir sings “I believe you” to the voice inside of us, that says what it says.

Initially the grown up voice in the song sings, “I cannot abide you”.

The child says, “I believe you”.

As we move through these days with a media hyper-focus on the coronavirus, we can get caught up in the frenzy of seeing all others as merely unsafe. We can “not abide” others. We can become untrusting, and so afraid, that we fail to see how vulnerable we are at any given moment.

This is not to say we shouldn’t take precautions. I think precautions are smart. 

As someone who participates in growing food for her family, and regardless of pandemics, puts significant effort into building the immunity systems of her family, I oscillate nearly every day, between what resiliency looks like, amidst what it also looks like to live close to vulnerability. Meaning, I don’t want my sufficiency to make me hardened… I want it to deepen the softening of what it means to live in the preciousness of my, and others, fragility.

As I have gone through this series, I have consistently been trying to expand personal healing into the Big Story. This song is no exception. Especially at this time.

What does it mean to trust, that we are precious in our fragility?  

What does it mean to live as though we believe that we are a part of a great, deeply trustworthy mystery?

How do we exercise wise caution, but also not get obsessed, or treat others with disrespect?

Fighting over toilet paper ought not to be the great Opus of our time, even if it is what we feel we have control over. 

When the book of James references Psalm 103, it adds that a rich man should exult in his low position because he will pass away like the flowers in the field.

That the rich man will fade away in the midst of his pursuits.

And in 1 Peter, it says “all flesh is like grass”. This is why I've never really understood the pursuit of power. Unless being memorable however you have to be, is what you feel makes you "immortal". (For instance, when I haven't really been present with my small children, they act out to try and get my attention... perhaps this is what is happening with all oligarchs?)

When we begin to sing the lines “you are precious in your fragility”, and “you are unbearably beautiful” to ourselves, and to each other, and to this planet... that inner child in each of us will sing out,

“I believe you”.

May we respond to all that lies ahead with this preciousness, for each other, and for our planet.

Find your feet, rooted in the gift of life itself. You are dust and to dust you shall return, but that dust is here because of Love... so also... you come from Love and to Love you shall return.




And... speaking of roots and seeds and the preciousness of life... I encouraged a number of you to support Randy and Edith Woodley's (Eloheh- Indigenous Centre for Earth Justice), land purchase this past fall, and they are still working at it... with some really crucial fundraising going on right now. If you reside in the US and are planning on buying seeds for your garden, I highly encourage you to purchase your seeds from Eloheh Farms! The seeds are rich in heritage and you will be supporting very beautiful work.

Here are all of the essential links for bringing support to their important work:

Read more about who they are and what they do:  https://www.eloheh.org/

Purchase Randy's brand new book entitled Decolonizing Evangelicalism - 
https://wipfandstock.com/decolonizing-evangelicalism.html

Buy their seeds!  - https://elohehseeds.com/