What is God's kingdom like? What story [parable, analogy] can I use to explain it? It is like what happens when a mustard seed is planted in the ground. It is the smallest seed in all the world. But once it is planted, it grows larger than any garden plant. It even puts out branches that are big enough for birds to nest in its shade.
The gentle Spring rain permeates the soil of my consciousness.
A seed that has lain deeply in the Earth for many years just smiles.
*Thich Nhat Hanh. "Cuckoo Telephone." In Call Me by My True Names.
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May 2015 -
Recently, I took some apples with me on a visit to my family. My dad tried one and talked about how tasty the apple was. I remembered that the reason was ripeness. I had bought the apples many days before and had eaten one, but it was not as tasty. Like much of mass-produced, too-early-picked fruit in our grocery stores, the apples were hard and needed more time for the ripening process. When my dad and I ate two of them later, they had had time to ripen more. I did not have to ripen them, only provide a conducive environment.
November 2023 -
Four inmates attended the small group. I left, realizing how two were so unripe to live the wisdom we shared together. Yet, I recalled my role was to speak of what they could not yet live so they might live it later. Sharing what they are not prepared to live is a step toward a time when they are prepared to live it.
That is the way with all of us: we need to hear what we are not ripe to live, which becomes a part of becoming able to live it. We need to speak to others from where they can someday live, not merely from where they can presently live. We can only grow from where we are, but we need a vision of where we can grow to.
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When we want a plant to produce, we provide causes and conditions for it to produce. We cannot force it to produce, and we cannot give it the innate potential to produce. The rose is already in the rosebush.
Growth is natural. We trust the process. The only obstacle is unwillingness. The rosebush cannot decide not to produce a rose; we can decide not to produce the fruit of heartfulness. We can choose not to engage in life in a manner that allows us to ripen spiritually. We can choose to be sensual beings. Such is an unnatural life.
Not evolving spiritually is like the grapevine refusing to grow grapes. If we saw a grapevine able to do that, and it chose to deny its destiny, we would think that strange. Well, how about humans attaching to a mere worldly, sensual life? Yet, we accept that as normal? Is it sane for a cow to try to sing rather than moo?
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Therefore, we can love others where they are, providing guidance if they welcome it, with a nonjudgmental presence, trusting the potential they cannot live presently. We can model spiritual aspiration and devotion and its fruition. We can treat ourselves with the same graciousness. Trying to rush growth is not wise. Cooperating with the potential to grow and bear fruit by cultivating the seeds within us is natural.
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When we grow spiritually, we do not keep inspecting how we are growing. A gardener does not hover over her garden. She visits it as she needs to. She can see growth but is not trying to inspect every incremental growth. She knows it is a slow process. Her focus is to tend the garden.
Too much self-focus is adverse to the spiritual life. We simply tend the heart garden, applying the chosen tools to cultivate it. Over time, we see we have grown by the results. The fruit is proof of the growth. We increase in patience, compassion, kindness, forgiveness, etc. But our attention remains on applying the tools - our practices. Cultivating never ends, so ripening continues.
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There is always a hidden, unseen element aiding growth in the spiritual life. Nhat Hanh uses the image of a "gentle Spring rain." Many call this grace. We participate in an unseen presence essential to the process. We trust this unseen influence. We can look back over our lives and see how this intangible inspiration has aided our spiritual maturation.
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*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2023. Permission is given to use photographs and writings with credit given to the copyright owner.
*Brian's book is An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love. The book is a collection of poems Brian wrote based on wisdom traditions, predominantly Christian, Buddhist, and Sufi, with extensive notes on the poetry's teachings and imagery.
