On the eve before Christmas, all seems so quiet. Waking at 3am usually means everything is sleeping…everything except my brain. I woke and could hear every noise in the house. The dishwasher was running. The cats came to cuddle, purring loudly. And when I should be drifting back to sleep, my mind opens up a jukebox of options.
When arriving at a fork in the road, it is a 50:50 ratio.
This or That. Right of Left. High or Low. One cannot just plop down and not move. The path itself is moving, like moving sidewalks in the airport. You propel forward irregardless. But what if you are presented with a true fork, like the one beside your plate: four tines. A meat fork is a two pronged thing and the usual metaphor for life and our choices. But so often life is a multiple choice question and not simply a true or false. We have so many options, so many choices, so much freedom and the luxury of exploration. From where I stand, I have some choices to make. I cannot divide like the magical starfish, regenerating the rest of me so I can journey down every path. I do have hope that a path, once chosen, could twist or fold or double back picking up one of the paths I had to forgo. Then I get all those secondary colors.
But my sleep deprived brain has the flash of a thought that I can’t go down every path or I end up with shit brown, I do want my 64 count box of Crayons but if I mix all the colors together, I end up with a mucky, ugly unattractive poo color.
But even poo has value, fertilizing the Life we plant, tend and grow. Without a well amended soil, tilled with dense, rich compost (aka crap), a bountiful life is not possible. A crap free garden is sparse, it lacks the nutrients necessary to nourish seeds to sprout, roots develop and plants to grow. You can probably survive from its output, but trust me….you want a good, smelly truck load of manure on a regular basis if you want abundance. Without the genuine stink, you have to add synthetic fertilizers and that ends up costing more and adding risk and uncertainty for the future. Organic matter knows what to do, it has a cycle unto itself. If you want a larder stocked with your harvest; stockpiled for the leaner times, then welcome the crap. It is useful…even necessary. Just like in the parable, the mustard seed grows best when planted in the best soil, watered properly and given the right amount of sun(Son). But remember, good soil is usually full of all the shit that happens. And THAT, my friends is a good thing.
