Overwintering
Flourishing in the season of rest
My geranium plant is spending the winter indoors, and despite her paling green leaves, she continues to generate new buds and faded orange-red blooms.
I find it amusing -- doesn’t she know to slow down? Each time new shoots and buds appear, I whisper to her, “not now”, and prune back the emerging growth.
If not now, when, and how will I know?
When it comes to our most personal longings, isn’t that what we really want to know?
This year you may want to:
show up more fully in life without separation between the inside ‘me’, and the ‘me’ in the world
build more intimacy and connection
live from potential rather than scarcity
be more emotionally free and unencumbered
feel ownership of your direction and take action accordingly
All of these stirrings of longing and desire for expression, experience, contribution, connection and realization are building beneath the surface and create the essential tension of winter (whether we are in actual winter or a season of winter in our lives):
I’m still dreaming, though I’m quiet.
I’m still here, though I’m unseen.
To hold this tension and be with it in service of what we most want to bring about in our lives is a practice and commitment to trust in what we cannot yet see, to listen for the first whispers of a new direction.
Can you drop into the inner, quiet, still place by trusting that in another day you’ll emerge again?
This is what my geranium needs, which is why I keep reminding her, "not yet, but soon."
What in your life wants tending?
This post originally appeared on marastone.co on January 16, 2018.