What Grows in Still Air?

 

In the first week of St. Ignatius's Spiritual Exercises, one is asked to identify a fault on which to focus and to ask for grace in improving.  I have chosen the vice of impatience, both because it leads to making poor decisions (leading to other faults) but also because it feels like a sin in and of itself against the beauty of the world that we have been gifted.  As the old adage indeed goes, haste makes waste.

There is also the impervious imposition of stillness we are all facing at this moment.  Few plans to make, places to go, people to see.  There is no real future with which to fill our present.  

Parts of me rage at the sameness of it all, an outdoor plant grown leggy indoors, searching for light that I cannot reach, and in so doing, becoming a cranky Medusa capable only of turning others to stone.

Other parts, though, the deeper parts that first sought the Exercises, know better than to caterwaul and cleave to an ether with no sun.  The part of me that wants to flex discernment in both thought and deed has to ask, and seek answers to, the question: what grows in still air?

_______________________________________

Between the wind currents that circulate across the planet, and the soil on which we stand, is a still air called the boundary layer.  In it, below the turbulence of objects in wind, moss grows.  

Moss- the original green, the first tapestry, the musk of patient gains.  It has no roots, and no vascular system with which to move water through its body. It flourishes where the air is even,  moisture stable, and light diffuse but present.  It seeks conditions akin to refuge, though looking closely at its cells, is it not a cathedral itself?

Moss measures its winnings in centimeters.  It hosts the tiniest of tiny parties.  It does not dazzle like the cherry blossom or resound like the sequoia.  Now, I can appreciate moss for being like itself.  But the moment I think of my OWN life as small, defenseless, and underfoot, the meditation on patience ends and Medusa returns.  My life should be bold, busy, noticeable even from great heights! I would rather be a seed in a southeasterly wind, subject to turbulence, tossed about, doing SOMETHING, than to be the mere observer of bigger, louder, faster life.

________________________________________________

Lord- giver of this bread and fruit world- forgive me for my impatience, for it shows I have not yet released myself from my megalomania in motion.  

Help me to know in my heart that I do not always have to be the subject of action but can also be an object of quiet.  

Help me to be calm so that other things not born of my own desire may grow around me, above me, aside me, astride me.  

Help me to see the still air as the place where I may be a host rather than a guest.