HOW ARE YOU RELATING TO YOUR HUSK?

This summer, I enrolled in the Heart of Higher Education’s online Circle of Trust retreat series. Our first meeting took place in late September, and not surprisingly, our leaders drew heavily on the season of fall. Thus it may seem counterintuitive that seeds appeared over and over again in the material for that first session. I, for one, associate seeds with the spring, when I think of them breaking open and sending shoots out into a new and warming world. But as Parker Palmer reminds us,

“what does nature do in autumn? She scatters the seeds that will bring new growth in the spring — and she scatters them with amazing abandon.”

During that first session, one of our leaders shared a very basic diagram of a seed, pointing out the germ (where life packs the DNA that guides the seed into what it will become), the endosperm (which provides nourishment for the germ until it can obtain these from soil, water, and sun), and the husk (which protects the germ until conditions are right for its growth). In our journals, we were given time to reflect on how the metaphor of the seed might apply to our own lives.

I didn’t spend too much time trying to figure out the DNA of my germ because we had also read
David Whyte’s poem, “What to Remember When Waking,” for our session.

After all,
what you can plan
is too small
for you to live.

No reason, therefore, to close down the emergent properties of the seed. On the other hand, I very much enjoyed imagining all the sources of nourishment in my endosperm — all the loved ones, practitioners, practices, teachings, places, experiences that fill me up. Our leader had invited us to let the nourishment be as big as it could possibly be, and the support was palpable.

But reflecting on the husk produced the greatest discovery. As I thought of all the ways I’ve tried to protect myself — the discipline and structure, often taken to extremes in an attempt to control outcomes — I suddenly felt gratitude. Instead of beating myself up for this rigidity, I could see for the first time how I had been trying to care for myself in the best way I knew how. It also felt good to realize my husk has been cracking open. As conditions have ripened these last few years, I have softened these protective mechanisms as my seed, drawing upon the nourishment in the endosperm, begins to root and reach toward new elements: soil, water, and sun. Interestingly, this moment of changing how I relate to my husk — from shame to gratitude — becomes the very means by which the husk is able to crack open even more.

*I first met Allison 25+ years ago when we lived and worked together as members of intentional community in the Cascade Mountains of Washington state and then in New York City. Since then, our lives have taken us in different directions geographically, but in our hearts, we have always felt like home to one another.

Aside from her role as Associate Professor of English at Valparaiso University, Allison and her partner Liz Wuerffel (a frequent photo contributor on these blog posts) created the Welcome Project, a collection of initiatives grounded in gathering first-person narratives “we hoped would provide entrance into each others’ lives and illuminate the complexity of living together amidst increasing diversity and difference.” Started in 2010 as a campus project, it has since expanded to Gary and other nearby communities in Northwest Indiana, illuminating the changing racial and economic demographics of the region since the 1960’s.