TURNING LIGHT INTO FOOD
“We still might feed the dark thing in us that grows away from the light until against all sense we mysteriously flower in the other direction.”
~ Anonymous
Quietly, each spring, things in the plant world start growing slowly toward the light, while their roots finger their way underground. But once breaking surface, the most amazing thing happens again and again without a sound: the exposed thing growing toward the light stays alive by turning light into food. We’ve all learned about this. It’s called “photosynthesis,” the process by which leaves turn sunlight into sugar, which feeds their roots; then the roots, once nourished, make the stems and leaves grow further.
The smallest plant life in spring reveals to us both the challenge of being a spirit in human form and the quiet courage necessary to grow inwardly. For this is our deepest calling: how to turn light into food.
How often we are told, “You can’t live on air.” Yet if we dare to make our way into the open, we are drawn into the air and the light, and the rest somehow happens. For like the nubs of shoots yet to break ground, we can’t help it. Something in our very fiber knows where the light is, even when we can’t see it.
My most profound experience of this was in the midst of my worst despair after being diagnosed with a tumor pressing on my brain. Inexplicably, despite the fear and terror and sadness, despite doctors and technicians telling me the worst of what they imagined for me - though they really didn’t know - somehow, though I was digging deeper in the dark like a stubborn root, some essential vein of being was, for all that, growing toward the light.
And I am here to tell you, you can live on air. The light is our home.
~ In early spring, choose one twig or stem and watch it grow. Follow its progress every other day.
~ As you notice its changes, be aware of its complex relationship to both the light above and the dark below.
~ As you watch this piece of life grow, imagine it as a mirror of something in you about to break ground.
~ What is this small piece of greenery teaching you about yourself?
The Book of Awakening
~ Mark Nepo