"Seed Pod Season"

Eyes of Awe

“There is ecstasy in paying attention. You can get into a kind of Wordsworthian openness to the world, where you see in everything the essence of holiness, a sign that God is implicit in all of creation.”

Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird)

There is a poem by the Persian mystic Rumi, quoted by Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird, that speaks to the sacramental view of life:

“God's joy moves from unmarked box to unmarked box,

from cell to cell. As rainwater, down into flowerbed.

As rose, up from ground.

Now it looks like a plate of rice and fish,

now a cliff covered in vines,

now a horse being saddled.

It hides within these,

till one day it cracks them open.”

We have entered what I call “seed pod season” here in the Deep South. If you are a walker like I am, you will see every imaginable kind of seed pod growing along the side of the road. You might have to move beyond manicured residential areas to see them. Liza and I are fond of the alleys in our old Birmingham neighborhood. People aren't as compulsive about tending them. There's lots to sniff for Liza, and lots to contemplate for me. Seed pods are high on my list.

Here is why. When you look at the myriad ways plants are designed to spread their seeds, from frilly, feathery puffs carried on the wind, to long pods that snap open with such ferocity their seeds are flung ten or fifteen feet, to oily little bits birds like to eat and then poop five miles away, it's pretty impressive. I think to myself, why would the Creator of the universe come up with all these ways to spread plant seeds, and then make only one path to God? Would the Creator of camellias, fir trees and giant redwoods, as well as kudzu, poke weed and rabbit brier, look down upon God's own handiwork and say, “This is a good plant and this is a bad one?” Or, for that matter, proclaim, “This is a good human and this is a bad one.” Somehow, I doubt it.

If we look with eyes of awe, even little brown seed pods display the brilliance of God's joy. We could, if we chose, look at our fellow humans with the same awe and see only beauty.

                                                                    In the Spirit,

                                                                        Jane