POSSIBILITY GARDEN

POSSIBILITY GARDEN

Some of you may have been the recipient of a greeting card from me that contained a package of seeds. The package of seeds carries a subliminal message which is left to the imagination of the receiver. Sometimes I will write a line or two that is connected to the seed, “grow where you are sown, etc.” What I always hope for and leave unwritten is a hope for an epiphany moment when the recipient will see themselves as a garden filled with possibilities.

A single seed is full of potential and possibility until it sown – a seed is only potential and possibility and looks nothing like what it can be. To explore and expose what lies within the seed, the seeds must first be rescued from the glossy packaging. Nothing happens until the sleeve is ripped.

The instructions and graphics on the back of each sleeve are almost identical – a map of the USA with a color grid indicating when the seed should be sown, days to germinate, depth to sow in soil, seed spacing or casting, growing height, days to harvest, where to sow, and a description of what the seed should produce. Following the guidelines should increase the potential for maximum results.

Two things are generally different for each type of seed - time to germinate and days to harvest. There was a significant difference between the time to germinate and harvest between microgreens (within 2 to 5 days and harvest in as little as five days) and peppers (10 to 20 days and up to 80 days to harvest).

Transposing seed knowledge to the human context, I conjectured that most of us want to be microgreens. We desire to be packages filled with seeds of opportunity, changes of behavior, and well-defined goals. We don’t mind being ripped open, sown, and left to germinate. But please let the harvest be ready as soon as possible. This is an explanation for why 80% of New Year’s resolutions are given up by February.

The other Aha moment came from peppers – two hot pepper types different in color only, had different sowing instructions and days to harvest.

Once again transposing seed knowledge to the human context, I conjured two people starting a seemingly identical journey at the same time but needing different resources and encouragement to reach the destination and the time to do so differs.

I am willing to wager a package of seeds, that the peppers never wished to be microgreens or the red pepper to be yellow or green and neither pepper sought out ways to germinate more quickly, grow faster or be harvested sooner. They are powerless like us to make these changes anyway.

There is a season – a time and place for our possibilities to become opportunities and the opportunities to fully bloom. Our job is to open the package, sow the seed, work the soil where we are planted, let the environment do its work and wait for harvest. To do otherwise, is to become frustrated.

Ecclesiastes 3:1

PONDER THIS THOUGHT… Powerlessness can be powerful. The power is born from the seed of knowing the season will change.