Watching the seed sprout and the leaves unfurl, looking at how the roots seek nourishment and strength from the rich black earth. Seeing the petals form, open and die away. Witnessing the ripening of berries, seed heads and new life.
All this, has restored in me, over the years, great hope.
A courageous and brave hope, not one made up of assumptions and presumptions, a shoulder shrug that ‘all will be ok’
But a hope born from witnessing how all plants, all nature, is born and birthed from the place that is made up of courageous love.
A love to create life, wellness and wholeness. To turn the concrete into forests, the mono-cultured lawns into wild medicine and the cut off hearts to be gently opened.
It is miraculous this natural life, a heart warming and powerful presence offering the lesson of alchemy. How even the most painful, the sorrowful, the ugly can be turned into something beautiful, alive and potent.
This hope, this witnessing of growth and renewal, brings me to the knowledge, that we as human animals, as beings of nature are cut from the same cloth, expelled from the same seed, moulded with the same clay.
We too, inside us are formed with the pull for goodness, health, wholeness and renewal. Inside us we know how to turn our concrete bodies into forests of knowing, our inner poisoned lawns into medicine gardens and our hearts into valuable teachers.
Not only do we know how, for we are made that way, but it is deeply, intrinsically us.
It is our original centre, or, as Robin Wall Kimmerer calls it, ‘our original instructions’
These instructions cannot be burned, crumpled up or destroyed.
They are our making. Yes they can be hidden, forgotten even, but never lost, no matter what has happened.
And as my fingers touch medicines green, I see the visual representation of what we, as kith and kin to the land are in our hearts, our bones and our soul.