Letter: The Soil Is Doing Its Work

Friend,

A small thing this morning.

I was watching the patch of garden outside the kitchen window. It looked, for most of February, like nothing was happening. The soil was the same brown soil. The branches were the same bare branches. Most weeks I walked past the window without looking.

This morning, after the warm rain on Wednesday, there were small green points everywhere. The bulbs I had planted in October — and forgotten about — were arriving.

This is the most ordinary thing in the world. People have been watching this happen for as long as there have been people. And yet I stood at the kitchen window for several minutes this morning, and felt something close to surprise.

The soil had been doing its work the whole time.

I write this to you because I have noticed that we — those of us trying to live more attentively, less hurriedly — sometimes feel as though nothing is happening. The morning sit is the same morning sit. The slow walk is the same slow walk. The conversations with the people we love are the same conversations. We wonder, in our lower moments, whether any of it is actually changing us.

It is. The soil is doing its work.

You will not see the green points for some time. They are still under the surface, gathering. The work of practice is mostly invisible. The body is becoming slightly less reactive, the mind slightly more spacious, the heart slightly more available — by very small degrees, none of which announce themselves.

Then, one morning, after some warm rain — a hard week, a piece of grief, an unexpected kindness — the small green points appear. You notice you handled something the way you would not have handled it a year ago. You notice you sat with a feeling instead of running from it. You notice that someone has thanked you for being a kinder presence than you used to be.

The soil has been doing its work. You did not notice because the work is mostly underground.

This week, if it has been one of those weeks that feels like nothing is happening, take it as a good sign. The bulbs you planted in October are still gathering. They will come up at their own pace. They almost always do.

Sit well this week.

— nomind

One quote:

The years teach much which the days never knew.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

One practice:

Today, find one small thing in your life that has changed in the last year that you did not notice changing. A relationship that has settled. A habit that has rooted. A worry that has quieted. Acknowledge it briefly. Thank the soil.