We are entering 2022 under dark clouds. What gives you light in times of darkness?
Some years ago, I abandoned the idea of New Year resolutions (because I usually forgot or forsook them come March), and started to think more about rhythms and rituals. I realise that the one ritual that I have automatically performed, year after year, is the sowing of seeds on the first week of the new year. By this time, the garden beds would have been rested and regenerated over November and December to coincide with the monsoon, and would be ready for a new growing season.
This week, I am sowing butternut squash, French beans, tomatoes, coriander, and a variety of leafy salads – favourites that are lovely to see and lovely to eat. To sow is to wonder at the mystery of life. How does a seed as small and dead as the full stop before this sentence, puts forth new limbs, one that arches for the sun and another that sinks into the soil, and in a matter of days and weeks, transforms into a lively creature totally unrecognisable from the dot that it started from? To sow is to remember that there is a larger power at work in this world that turns seeds to plants to food, that raises the sun every morning even behind dark clouds, and that provides for our human sustenance through seeds and sun. I can’t think of a more hopeful ritual to mark the new year.
What are your rituals of hope?
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5)
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