NOTE: The letter below is a final note sent to the spiritual formation community I started and have led since 2003. In it I offer a Reflection Exercise for the summer months when we do not meet. It was offered as an addendum to our final gathering which was Sunday, May 21 in which we continued to reflect together on what it means to live a significant life. I thought it might be of interest to more than the H&H community.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,
to front only the essential facts of life,
and see if I could not learn what it had to teach,
and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
~ Henry David Thoreau

Dear H & H Friends,

Thanks again for a great year together and for your thoughtful participation yesterday. While yesterday’s focus, reflection, and conversations are still fresh in your mind I wanted to offer one more suggestion for ongoing reflection. It ties back to where I ended my comments and the images with which Dawna Markova’s poem ends:

I choose to risk my significance,
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.1

As we unpacked our theme for 2016-2017 — “From the Inside Out: Living a Significant Life” – we saw that significant living doesn’t just happen. It requires consciousness and intentionality. In light of this, for your further reflection on living a significant life you might want to use the images of fruit, blossom, and seed. To this I suggest adding soil. Consider drawing your own picture of a tree with fruit and blossom. Or you might want to use 3×5 cards. Beginning with the image of fruit, ask yourself what you want the fruit of your days to be, the fruit of your life. Annie Dillard writes “How we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives.” Using 3×5 cards or on the margins of your drawing, write down 3-5 fruits you want and intend to bear. Think edible fruit, since this image especially conjures up how your life can nourish others.

Working your way down the tree, ask yourself, what do you want the blossoms of your life to be. I remind you of my favorite short story from which the name of this blog is derived. In Report to Greco Nikos Kazantzakis’ friend happens upon a tree in full bloom in winter on Mt. Athos and this poem comes forth: “And I said to the Almond tree, ‘Sister, speak to me of God.’ And the Almond tree blossomed.” Here blossom signifies flourishing and flourishing is the sure sign of the presence of God. Ask yourself “How do I know when I am thriving? What are the signs?” Or ask “What are the ways I need/want to blossom and flourish so that I will bear the fruit I listed earlier?” Then write these on 3×5 cards or along the margins of your tree drawing.

Next, prayerfully choose 1-3 fruits and 1-3 blossoms from your earlier choices, narrowing it down, and ask yourself what are the seeds that I will need to sow or reseed in order to produce these blossoms of flourishing and these fruits that are nourishing? Scripture tells us we reap what we sow. If we plant the seeds of discord, we can’t expect peace anymore than we can expect peas if we plant corn. But if we consciously sow what is good, edifying, and enlivening for ourselves, others, and the earth it will produce in kind.

Finally, trees don’t grow out of thin air. They are rooted in soil. Recall Merton’s sense of God as “the hidden ground of love.” Think of Jesus’ parable of the seeds sown in various types of soil. The only seeds that take root and produce are the ones in good, rich soil. Now look at your seeds, blossoms, and fruit and ask yourself in what “soil” must I place these seeds? For example, maybe your life is too hectic or maybe you want to plant seeds of contemplative prayer. You might decide that what would be soil for each of these desires respectively is some regular time of solitude, silence, and stillness. So you might decide to set time aside in a certain place each day to be alone, to be quiet and still. The soil is often the conditions, context, and/or circumstances that we can choose to enhance the possibility for growth.

There is a beautiful line in the Talmud, an entire story in one line: “Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, ‘Grow, grow.’”

So, until we gather again for our 15th year, I leave you with two “words” – Flourish! and, Be someone’s whispering angel.

Extravagant Blessings,

Dan

1 from “I Will Not Die An Unlived Life” from a book by the same title.