Reflections on the oracular message of a houseplant
small brave thing #240
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I recorded this one. It felt important to bring my voice-literally-to these words.
Hello beautiful human,
This morning marked the first weekly “Monday Weavery” hour of this Inviting Space’s Circle. We opened the hour with a meditation that invited us to tune in to the “oracle of the every day.” This Reflection is what arose for me, today, from that exercise.
I notice the shamrock to my left, perched on the shelf with other plants. After a period of dying back it’s once again putting up new growth. A few young, light, slightly sticky looking leaves nestle down in the center of the pot, amid the many dead stems. Could this have anything to do with my haphazard watering patterns? Yes. Is it also, today, an oracle of the everyday? Also yes.
As I contemplate my shamrock’s many cycles of dying and growth that this room has witnessed, I feel a sense of recognition and kinship…and shame. After all, the new Circle membership I’m launching this summer is something I have attempted before, isn’t it. Through the years across different mailing lists, on a variety of platforms. Along the way across many fits, starts and setbacks I have lost many followers. I find myself asking, Is it any wonder if my old readers and students don’t trust me? I’ve been here before. What’s to say I won’t disappear again?
Then I catch myself. This shame is an old story and a sabotage. No one has said they don’t trust me. It’s just me in here which means…I am the one who lacks trust. That voice is my own. How tricksy of me, this attempt to keep myself small by talking myself out of my new idea.
My sense of failure, the reason that voice holds any sway this morning, springs from the idea that we’re supposed to birth something new into the world that grows to live and succeed beyond us. That somehow that shining idea or institution, whatever it is we create, is our contribution. And if it doesn’t last, if it goes away in five years, or three, or ten, we’ve somehow failed and fallen short.
In the spaciousness of this hour, I take a step back and see that metaphor for the envious construct of the patriarchy that it is.
What if, and this feels like a new story just beginning to speak itself, what if we don’t “give birth” to shining new inventions? What if, like my little shamrock, we grow, die back, disappear for a while, show up again new, tender, tentative, and still with all our integrity and passion? What if a career, or a life, might consist of many iterations and waves? Maybe it’s a lie of biographers and retrospectives to see a whole, seamless and sensible, where there is in the experiencing of it chaos, confusion, false starts and true, and if we’re lucky, occasional gleams of pinnacle and accomplishment?
I have had an incredibly fortunate life. I can point with pride and gratitude to achievements: books published, awards won, projects brought to successful completion. To be here again at the beginning, raw, wondering, feels like a gift and a privilege, albeit a somewhat daunting one.
And then I remind myself even that is a bit of an old story. I am not at the beginning, I am in the midst of ongoing collaborations and conversations, on my umpty-eleventh journal, and this Substack has over 200 posts. I am as ever very much in the middle of the muddle, messy, liminal, a bit mucky in the softer places.
And there is the message of the little shamrock on my shelf this morning. It’s going to take me some time to really move into this and explore it, but the words I find for now: It isn’t about the individual person, nor project. It isn’t about beginnings or nice round shapes or stats and wrap ups. It is wave upon wave upon wave, through the drafts of the essay, through the life, across the generations as we grow, shift, struggle and heal. Wave upon wave upon wave.
To find myself here, again at the point of turn, when ebb shifts to flow, where a mark is made on a blank page, and a circle is convened for the first next time, is to be radically present to one shimmering moment and morning. Breathe in. Pause. Exhale. Pause. Breathe in. Again. That’s all it is. That’s all there is. Wave upon wave, and if you close your eyes and listen to your breath, you might hear the ocean itself.
xo
S
I believe our world needs new stories. what if those stories lie curled within us like seeds? This is An Inviting Space to experience where and how we might discover, recover and nurture the secret, magical gardens of soul day by day. Starting where we are, as we are.
A Celebration Corner for sharing the Good Goodies
Go see Sinners. (Note: the trailer I linked to here does have some spoilers if that’s a thing for you.) On Max, in the theater, wherever you can. Black gangsters, vampires, the blues, the stories (old, new, true) that need to be told and heard. And just gorgeous film-making all around.
One quote from this morning’s Weavery: My to-do list still waits, but now I feel a little less hurried. There’s the win, my friends. Maybe we’ll see you at Wednesday’s Well (scheduled for noon central time)? Where we’ll put some creative energy into growing our own powers of perception and wonder in community with each other. Join the Circle here.
Your support is welcome, and your attention and time are true gifts. Thank you.
Sadie, thank you for your kind words and the shout-out here!
Oh so grateful for the messy middle and beginning again from there and for your offering of voice with this weavery reflection <3