As the winter solstice lovingly wraps us in its longest night, I'm drawn back to May 3rd of this year—the morning a new generation of jewelry corn seeds were planted.
You might imagine this planting ritual as all sunshine and rainbows. As someone who revels in paradox, I can attest that the real thing was much richer and more beautiful.
As you already well know, our world’s obsession with light—day reigning over night, certainty outshining curiosity, pale skin trumping darker shades—is boooooring and not to mention, has a big cost to our health and happiness!
Within the shadows resides a mighty force—the Great Mother of Mystery birthing life itself. Infinite compassion itself.
Across cultures who have intact relationships with the Earth and cosmos, it's known that the dark is where life gets its spark—from teeny seeds to entire universes.
Yet, the darkness isn't a walk in the park. There’s good reason our society pushes it away.
For us, real Transformation demands we honor, grieve, and release all that has brought us to this moment in order to welcome what is true now. It's not easy!
But just like seeds blooming into stars in the dark, we humans know how to turn towards the call of the unknown twinkling in our hearts.
So on that dewy spring morning, with birds chirping all around, fat tears streamed down my cheeks and fell to the soil.
Their seed-ness would never be again.
I cradled those tiny, precious, rainbow sun-colored marvels, feeling their courage—leaping into the unknown.
Placing a seed gently on my tongue, I silently conveyed gratitude for our lives and shared my deep longing that our collaboration bring untold beauty and Earth connection to the people who will adorn their children.
That you might know that you are not separate from the beauty of nature. You are the beauty of nature.
I pushed my finger in the wet earth and slowly opened a dark soil portal. Leaning over, I opened my mouth and released the seed back to darkness, carrying prayers for a beautiful, loving world.
So on these most fertile nights of the whole year, I urge you to ask yourself:
What deep needs do you have that are currently being met?
What do you deeply desire?
What are you terrified to claim as true, but that in your heart, you know is?
Here is one of my favorite poems for this moment that captures how I imagine the brave journey of the seed into its unbecoming so it can sprout new life.
For Light
by John O'Donohue
Light cannot see inside things.
That is what the dark is for:
Minding the interior,
Nurturing the draw of growth
Through places where death
In its own way turns into life.
In the glare of neon times,
Let our eyes not be worn
By surfaces that shine
With hunger made attractive.
That our thoughts may be true light,
Finding their way into words
Which have the weight of shadow
To hold the layers of truth.
That we never place our trust
In minds claimed by empty light,
Where one-sided certainties
Are driven by false desire.
When we look into the heart,
May our eyes have the kindness
And reverence of candlelight.
That the searching of our minds
Be equal to the oblique
Crevices and corners where
The mystery continues to dwell,
Glimmering in fugitive light.
When we are confined inside
The dark house of suffering
That moonlight might find a window.
When we become false and lost
That the severe noon-light
Would cast our shadow clear.
When we love, that dawn-light
Would lighten our feet
Upon the waters.
As we grow old, that twilight
Would illuminate treasure
In the fields of memory.
And when we come to search for God,
Let us first be robed in night,
Put on the mind of morning
To feel the rush of light
Spread slowly inside
The color and stillness
Of a found word.
~ John O’Donohue ~
