Ostara: Planting Seeds

Last week I scattered wildflower seeds in my garden. I was profoundly aware that this process marked the turning of the season for me. Prior to the scattering, I was very much still hunkered in winter. I scattered them in the rain, covered in mud with a soggy hat and my brown seed packets disintegrating. The simple scattering felt like an act of faith, of hope. Faith in these little seed beings and hope that they take to growing in my space. Then something shifted in me and I remembered growth and I remembered spring. I’ve been marvelling at the bees and and flowers…the life…already presenting itself…snowdrops, crocus, daffodils, primrose, willow catkins and more.

Last year in particular offered me deeper lessons in letting go. In that although we may make plans, have ideas, manifest and plant seeds - usually life has its own way. Life may meet our expectations but often it offers something quite different. This may be met with disappointment if we feel our expectations go unmet or joy if our expectations are ‘superseded’. Often we receive something wildly different.

They say that magic lies in the act of balancing creation and in letting go of the outcome of that creation. ‘The middle place’ keeps making itself known to me. The liminal. The unknown. The space of all possibilities. It is from this space that new possibilities arrive, new ways, new life, art, dreams, poems, acts of service. New choices. So as we move into spring and we plant our seeds for the year ahead I wonder if we can let go of the outcome whilst simultaneously holding hope, fear, life, death, joy, sorrow and everything ‘in-between’. To embrace the chaos in the cycles and the cycles in the chaos.