Rising

In December, I was given a Christmas cactus.  This was an apt gift, as the donor is someone with whom my dealings can be as prickly as the desert-dwelling plant itself.  It arrived dormant in its plastic pot, so I transferred it to a more permanent ceramic planter, set it on a sunny sill, and waited.

Nothing.

The soil grew dry with frustrating frequency.  No amount of moisture seemed to help.  In time, because I am a busy person, with other plants to tend, animals and birds to feed, and a household to keep in some sort of order (to say nothing of a schedule of writing, spiritual direction, and keeping up with far-flung family), the cactus sank lower on my to-do list, until I was doing the bare minimum to keep it alive.

This period of neglect coincided with Lent in a year when the desert journey of self-examination arrived earlier than usual.  I surrounded myself with poetry and reflections appropriate to the season.  I shed extraneous appointments.  After a difficult winter of loss and the disruption of institutions I have spent years working within, my goal was to settle as deeply as possible into the substrate of my personal ashes, review my sense of calling, and suss out the inner obstacles that regularly stand in my way.

I felt the stirrings of something new and wanted to nurture this as best I could.

By good fortune, the last two weeks of Lent I contracted a virulent virus.   It demanded absolute quarantine, volumes of tissues, many servings of chicken soup.  I couldn’t have orchestrated a more effective means of going off-grid.

No more could I flit from one diversion or book or recipe to another.  No more forcing myself on my life, ticking off lists to persuade myself of “progress.”  No more figuring out which battles to fight and how.

For two weeks, I had just this:  tea, silence, rest, time to reflect, and the one hour a week which I spent with a group of women accompanying me through my Lenten workshop (thanks be, to them!).

The plants were lucky to get minimum care.

In those two weeks, something mysterious and grace-filled happened to me.  I was too flattened to do much.  I didn’t even have to try to get out of my own way.  The merry-go-round had ground to a halt.

In the quiet afternoons, I found myself sifting through old photo albums.  I picked up a knitting project.  I framed a set of collages that had been hanging around waiting for me to do something with them.  I wrote notes and signed up for a bird watching walk.  I decided to become more compassionate towards the difficult people in my life — not least, the donor of the unyielding cactus.  Because – why not?  What did I have to lose?

If this doesn’t look like resurrection to you, don’t worry.  It’s all in the felt experience of freeing oneself of outgrown entanglements.  What I want to share with you here is the “way,” not the specifics of what arose like long-dormant shoots in my own life.

But rise they did, and along with them, I did a little bit too.

Every now and then we rise to the occasion.  Through some quirk of grace, we are able to remember that reality is bigger than our worn-out routines, fears, comparisons and anxieties.

If we only look at the lives of those who inspire us we see that so many founders of the great contemplative schools and movements were for long seasons of their lives men and women  “of the world.”   They fought wars, managed wealth, made colossal mistakes.  Each of them, through the illuminating experience of a larger vision, saw the smallness and narrowness of their self-serving aims, and were transformed into lives of wisdom and transformative teaching.

I am realistic enough to know that my enlightened sense of compassion, patience, and freedom will only last with a good deal of intentional prayer, but I do know that Easter is about this capacity that we each have to “rise” to the occasion of our own lives, our horizons, hopes and sense of larger possibility.

On Good Friday I bought tulips.  Then I made my rounds through my rooms with the watering can.  To the ivy and the jade plant, the ferns.  When I came to the cactus, I stopped.  At least eight blooms had appeared overnight, poised to burst into vivid pink flares of color.  This was not, it seems, a Christmas cactus at all.  It was just waiting for a certain light to bring it to new life.

I have set the plant in the middle of the coffee table for everyone who enters to enjoy, even if they never know the story of its rising.