Last week I spoke with a friend on the phone as she was out in her garden plucking seeds from this summer’s dead flowers, just to get a head start on next spring’s planting season. She’s a seed-saver. I realize there are some professional seed-savers who not only save a diverse range of seeds, but also save them in protected storage areas where they will remain safe should our bio-diversity dwindle even more than it has already.

What I like about these seed-savers is their sense of hope in the future. They believe in life’s potential. Fruits and vegetables are natural seed-savers. Having a ready supply of seeds to begin a new season of growth seems to me the height of responsible living.

All this brings me to those special seeds of insight and awareness that we have collected as we live each day. Some people collect these “seeds” by writing them in a journal. Others speak with trusted friends about them. Still others have artistic skills and so they compose songs or poetry, paintings or sculptures that embody those precious seeds of knowing what they value in life. When we know what we value, what is important to us, we can more easily align our values with what God is calling us to do with our lives.

May you treasure all the seeds you save,

Sister Tarianne

PS – to learn a more about how Adrian Dominican Sisters and Co-workers have worked with seeds for the future, visit our Permaculture website.

"anim1110" by NOAA Photo Library is licensed under CC BY 2.0

In The Book of Awakening, Mark Nepo offers us this colorful piece of wisdom about discernment: “The instant fish accept that they will never have arms, they grow fins.” In other words, we will never discover who we are meant to be until we accept who we are not. Most of us have tried to be someone we thought we could or should be in our grandest fantasies of ourselves, only to discover that it was not in our nature to be like the person we so admired.

In high school, I played the trumpet and dreamed of being a professional musician—the next Louis Armstrong! Once I discovered that I did not have the disposition nor the natural talent necessary to achieve that goal, I could let go of my desire to be famous and instead focus on enjoying music and the companionship of my friends in the band. Once I could accept who I was not, I could freely embrace my true self and develop the gifts and talents I did have, making for a much happier me.

Take some time to reflect on your relational life, career path, or lifestyle choices. Are these dimensions of your life nurturing your true self or blocking your path to authenticity and your real purpose in life? Are you at home with yourself, or are you trying to look like someone else? While people may say to us, “You can be whatever you want,” why be someone you are not? When we decide that who we are simply is not good enough, and we strive to look like someone else, we become just like a fish that is trying to grow arms.

Blessings,

Sister Sara