Rise Up

“The tiny seed knew that in order to grow, it needed to be dropped in dirt, covered in darkness and struggle to reach the light.” - Sandra Kring

Rising versus staying downtrodden in our life is largely dependent upon the seeds we plant in the living moment. In order for our future selves to experience harvest, we must lay seeds in today’s soil. And each moment, of each day, is an opportunity to plant in the soil you’ve been given.

These seeds are our actions, yet we often scatter them without intention. Or worse yet we hold onto the ones we are most hopeful about until next Monday or the New Year or until the weather is perfect in our metaphorical farm life. But that’s not how growing works.

Conditions need not be ideal on the day you plant… you can take that first run in the rain, open your new business bank account with only $200 in it, or start writing your book while the kids have a snow day. In fact, true growth often comes from the least desirable or likely sources. Sometimes you start your business right after you get fired. 

This Buddhist proverb, agrees, saying the lotus flower “blooms most beautifully from the deepest and thickest mud.” Good soil, fertile ground, does not develop over never ending sunny days. Any farmer will tell you the growing power of good old fashioned manure. And most fertile spring soil is fed by decay.

Franciscan Priest and inspiration teacher, Richard Rohr, speaks of the necessity of suffering for growth in his book Falling Upward. The trick, says Rohr, is to see hardship as the gift that it is to your life.

“It is not that suffering or failure might happen, or that it will only happen to you if you are bad, or that it will happen to the unfortunate, or to a few in other places, or that you can somehow by cleverness or righteousness avoid it. No, it will happen, and to you! Losing, failing, falling, sin, and the suffering that comes from those experiences—all of this is a necessary … We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right.”  

Challenges, discomfort and failures are what feeds the soil that helps us grow and rise, as long as we stop wallowing and remember to plant the seeds in the moment. Real rising, real growing, comes from the muck. This life is your story of growth, and your ongoing harvest. So tend to it. Dig deep, plant well, water, weed and prune.

Then ask yourself, each day and in each moment, how will I Rise Up in the coming season of my life?