Patience is not sitting and waiting, it is foreseeing. It is looking at the thorn and seeing the rose, looking at the night and seeing the day. Lovers are patient and know that the moon needs time to become full.
Rumi
In early April, when I was sure there would be no more frost conditions in the area of the Northeast I live, and the soil in a raised garden bed in my backyard was loose enough to dig, I planted three rows of Asiatic Lily Bulbs.
After sowing them a thumb-length down, I mulched the top and went about with my life. And at the time, my life wasn’t going so well. The long winter had heightened much of the isolation I felt during the pandemic, and with it a heightening of time for me to sit and dwell in my head – never a good thing. There was also the emergence of some unsettled grief from my father’s passing. The result was a combination of anxiety and depression that took root, much like I hoped would happen with the bulbs.
But the thing is, I had more faith in the bulbs than myself at the time. It is part of the experience of feeling such difficult emotions, I believe. They encourage you to not look forward with confidence and clarity, but to look back with pain and doubt. Still, I planted the bulbs with the idea that my wife and I would value and enjoy them in the summer, a sign that somewhere, deep inside, I knew things would get better. And gratefully they have. But as the old saying goes, it’s been one step forward, two steps back. That, I believe, is also part of the experience, the process of healing.
The bulbs, guided by nature, began to sprout up from the ground in May, grew taller throughout the month, showed some buds in June, and bloomed in July. They were beautiful and majestic. And they held firm for weeks, before succumbing to the other pull of nature – the petals wilting and falling one by one to the ground, leaving the stem and leaves to soak up the sun and and recharge the bulb with nutrients for its next year journey.
I had forgotten about the lilies after that, passing them daily without a glance. At the same time, perhaps coinciding with the upcoming one-year anniversary of my father’s passing, and the dreadful heat and humidity of mid-August, I began to fall, like the petals, back into pain. It made me fearful and concerned, having to deal longer with these feelings.
But one morning, not long ago, as I strode by the garden bed, I saw that one lily had newly sprouted. I was not aware that it had not joined with the others earlier, but there it was. It felt to me like “magic,” and it brought me joy and renewed hope that I was on the right path.
It also gave me the idea for this column. And as I like to do when exploring something involving the psyche and the soul, I asked my frequent writing collaborator, Jason Kurtz, an acclaimed analyst, award-winning playwright, and author of the memoir “Follow The Joy,” his opinion.
Here’s his take:
When we’re down and feeling hopeless, sometimes we need a little magic to get out of it. But where does the magic come from? Sometimes it seems to come out of thin air. Arriving just when we need it most. But other times, we have to put in the effort, to set the stage in a certain way, in order to foster the possibility of magic. I believe that the equation for creating the possibility of magic is: faith + patience. I discovered this when I was 27, alone and despondent about my future. I bought a one-way ticket to India, which was an act of faith: faith that I could have the experiences I needed to learn who I was and what I was meant to do. And then, on the trip, traveling from town to town, required patience. I had to arrive and wait for opportunities to present themselves, which they did. And day after day, experience after experience, magic happened.
So never give up, dear readers, no matter what you are going through, change does happen. And please believe that magic is in the air…and, of course, in the soil.
—
