SEEDBED OF THE YEAR
(in the dead of winter)
I was delighted to find such rich words synonymous with "beginning" from the Merriam-Webster Thesaurus:
inception onset dawn genesis morning birth threshold inauguration initiation git-go
nascence & seedbed
Blessed Seedbed of the Year to you! We are indeed in the origin days of the year 2024. Here in the north the winter weather has finally, properly arrived supporting my desire to slow, waaay down, reflect, dream and envision the next 13 (new) moons to come.
I like the mythos of a seedbed being present in the dead of winter, when all plant life has ceased. I like paradox - that paradox, is, keeps me curious, learning, challenged and real...and even hopeful. Ah yes, hopeful - such a reach to connect with sometimes, in this times.
Which naming word/s above rings true for you as the year dawns?
What seeds might you dream plant in your fertile, well composted seedbed?
In what some say (scientists, activists, artists, philosophers) are the ending time, we are arriving at a beginning....a new year of things known and plenty unknown, waiting to be revealed, a time of all possibilities even. A seedbed which we can have some agency in creating.
Are we, as humans, becoming more adept at holding what can seem paradoxical? The resistance, and denial of this seems to cause a great deal of added suffering (i speak from direct and personal experience). Paradox is the language of this universe according to, I'd say the trees, the watersheds, and the animate world, though that's only my relational sense of things. Quantum physics, sacred scripture throughout the world's religions and spiritual movements also bow to the elegance of paradox, the co-existence of opposites.
I write about this a lot. It's my jam, it's a calling. And yet, I regularly forget this, and then remembering arrives like grace, like mercy, like a gift. Each remembering is like re-discovering the key to being human, for me.
These reminders come every day if I'm listening, and paying attention. They are most poignant when the weight of this being human in this crucible of a world threatens to cave me in and yet I still practice bearing witness to the intensity - the genocide, the racial injustice, the piddling pettiness within and all around. It's not one or the other though, so I remember, that intensity exists AND so does the love, the wonder, the magic, the mystery, the awe and the hope.
This week a few reminders arrived in the intoxicating perfume of fresh and long awaited snow, from the sweet peace of two kittens purring on my chest and from these wise words -
Do not worry about your contradictions - Persephone is both floral maiden and queen of death. You, too, can be both. ― Nichole McElhaney, from her book, Soft Spoken Spells
What is your relationship with paradox, with the co-existence of opposites? Are you presently in a place of forgetting? Or a place of remembering? Or both?
Onwards and ongoingly into the seedbed of the year.
Love and gratitude for you my dear, for your dancing with paradox and for placing your attention here.
Tracy