Frozen

I stood there with my Dad, projecting my adolescent impatience with both the process and the explanation, although I knew better than to do anything but participate with good spirit.

I wish I had paid more attention, but the story took root and has forever lived inside me.

It was late Fall in the midwest and we were in the process of digging up his beloved family of rose bushes, and equally digging deep holes for their winter inverted burial (placement always mattered).  The reverse would happen sometime after the equinox of spring,, but before the summer one.

He would explain to me, as though I had never heard it before, and with a lyrical tone that somehow made it sacramental in nature and liturgically ritualistic in feel…

“We place our roses into the earth for this time of nourishment, so that they will be held beneath the frozen ground where they will be prepared for what is to come.  While they might otherwise survive, it is beneath the frozen tundra that makes them thrive.”

photo of Pawnee, IL frozen prairie, by my awesome sister-in-law, Candi

I look out at the frozen tundra and I wonder what is being nourished beneath the layer of ice that has fallen in the last 48 hours.

What is being cared for in the moist earth of invisible miracle
What might not be possible except for the protection of the freeze
What happens without my orchestration, organization, articulation and evaluation
How…does it happen without me?

I look within at the frozen tundra and I wonder what it is  I dare allow to be nourished and consent to allowing to emerge in due time

What can I let go of that gets in the way
What can I imagine to be possible if I don’t keep it frozen solid in the rationale of “won’t work”
What if there is a thawing of my past transgressions and a warming of the invitation to love
How…do I let the One who nourishes roses do the same for me?

It’s the First Friday of Lent

Thank goodness there is no fish because its ingestion kills me. But, I wonder about what’s gotten frozen in this year of aloneness And what has been nourished beyond my knowing.

The seed catalogs have arrived.
Outside and inside there are seeds to be planted.
But first, the Lenten freeze.

Don’t save me any fish!

See you on the Sabbath!

Bridget