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Don’t Postpone Joy

December 25, 2014 · Leave a Comment


Today I am here…

“Picture in your inner eye, your inner sight, four avocado seeds on the window sill. Three are suspended in a glass of water and have sprouted. One is still dry and papery and brown. Each of the sprouting seeds has its own character. One has two long roots, like two rubbery legs folding around each other in the bottom of the glass. Out of the top rises a cluster of tiny seedling leaves, and surprisingly, on this one, these leaves are white — little tight white albino avocado seedling leaves, coming out of that big hard seed knob. Another has one short straight root and one straight shoot bearing green leaves at the top. The third has neither root nor shoot, but the whole seed has been split open by a thrust from inside, and the two halves shoved apart by the germinating seed force — that little bunch of stuff, big as the end of your pinkie, shoving those big doors aside like a tiny Samson. It is a wonderful sight. And now let us look at the fourth seed, dry and papery and brown, nothing showing on the outside. But within are a life force and a living plantness which we cannot see with our ordinary eyes. If we are to behold the wrinkled old seed in truth, we have to behold it with imagination, with our inner eye. Only with the inner eye of imagination can we see inner forms of Being and Becoming. In this lifeless-looking seed there is a germinating center, totally alive and totally invisible.”~ from The Crossing Point Selected Talks and Writings by M C Richards


I am the fourth seed today – “dry and papery and brown, nothing showing on the outside.” I know when it is time I will robustly broadcast my own special leafy self – wide and tall and full. And I too will bear fruit which will bear seeds that will in turn bear fruit and so on and so on…

Knowing this is power. 

In the meantime I am NOT willing to postpone Joy until I sprout. For it is Joy that nourishes me. Yes – no matter the stage or state of my germination I will nourish Joy.

What do you nourish within yourself?

Tag You’re It! 

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Lani received a B.F.A from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1986 and earned a B.A in Art Education from NCCU in 2000.
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