Pulling weeds has taught me a lot about healing.
I have early memories helping my mother clear out the
unwanted plants growing around our tomatoes and the basil.
It’s best to get down on your hands and knees
when you’re pulling weeds, some jobs are meant to be dirty
and there are some challenges that call us
that can only be faced by getting into the thick of it
Weeding is tiring, even if it doesn’t start off that way
the feeling kicks in sooner or later.
And the once-patient process turns to the desire for efficiency-
curiosity in examining the minutiae of each plant
is replaced with task-based analysis.
It would be so easy to just start gripping the exposed parts
that we can see and excising them from the ground.
But the weeds will grow back. It requires a gentle love,
a dedication that is grounded in strength, to put in the time
the care, the effort
so that with some excavating and some assistance, and if
I pull with some patience, I can remove these unwanted roots
once and for all.
The beginning of a healing process can make me feel dark,
isolated, ugly. There’s been times
where I’d love nothing more than to just lay waste
to all that previously existed in myself
to start fresh.
But this would cause great harm, unnecessary pain.
You see, there are always
trees and shrubs and flowers and fungi growing within me.
I must be oh so intentional to appreciate and preserve
the life and rareness while I add up all the single seconds of miraculous joy
these roots must be protected while I do my pruning.
Fire reduces forests to ash
Below the surface, deep within the roots
there are organisms already at work, forces are in action
creating new life and sustaining what’s left –
even as the tree is still burning.
Other trees will share what they can so that
the one who is in need will have just enough- perhaps less than desired,
it might even feel like it’s starving- but in time that tree will also realize-
what it has, and what’s been given, these things are enough.
Thoughts and Musings 