Dance of Days

A grain of wheat in nature falls to the ground and roots itself.  I saw a film of this several years ago, before computer videos became so common.  The hairy strand at the top of the seed curled and uncurled with the changing humidity of night and day, curling and uncurling, making a place in the soil to take hold, pulling the seed into the soil and beginning the germination process. 

Of the seven children of the five mothers I mentioned in yesterday’s posting, I knew six.  No, I know six.  With the nights and days of my life, my memory of them plants them in my soul soil, curling and uncurling and finding purchase.  I remember them in their vitality, and their “gone-ness” makes me aware of my “here-ness”.  They give me the gift if presence, of breathing and seeing and smelling and tasting and touching, of longing and striving and slowing down, too, and being still.

They make me aware of my own adult children's here-ness, too, of the gift of their todays. 

When an Arab man becomes the father of a son, his name in changed.  My name, John Daniels, would have become John abu-Christopher 36 years ago.  It would remind me each moment that having become a father my life is forever changed, and my very identity. I think of these five mothers, whose names were not changed in the moment of their children’s passing, but that everything else did, especially at that first terrible moment.

For all of us who grieve, the probing of that tendril, curling and uncurling in our troubled hearts to find a place to grow in us determines and occupies the time of first shock.  My prayer for these five mothers is that as in the process of those grains of wheat in nature, the green shoot that emerges reaches to the light, dancing them in that phototropic gentleness and grace, teaching them the steps, accompanying them in that place that might otherwise seem like abandonment, that life somehow become for them the green dance of days.