My Beloved Dahlias Have a Word for You

How is it with you? How are you holding up as we round this last corner to the election? As we anticipate winter?

It feels like it's about to get harder again, doesn't it?

Every single day I savor the dahlias that are still blooming in my garden. They, along with the zinnias and cosmos earlier this summer, have allowed me, in the midst of all this uncertainty and upheaval, to get lost in beauty and wonder, gratitude and generosity. Each day —with my willing hands— they've shaped themselves into prayerful bouquets of balance, longing, and a re-awakened capacity for surprise.

I know that any day now a killing frost will strike, despite the dozen or more buds each plant has audaciously already lifted like a toast to our future. Meanwhile, though, these late Autumn blooms have signaled the shift to come. As Fall progresses, dahlias have the peculiar habit of producing increasingly eccentric blooms, full of irregular petals which curl inward. Are these petals a sort of swan song? Or an early indication that the time is approaching to seek center?

Whatever the case, they will soon be gone and I will miss their colorful guidance, their playful instruction, and their determined productivity. After the frost strikes, I'll relieve them of their once gorgeous and hard-working bodies.   I'll dig, lift, and separate their tuber roots before laying these to rest in a cold, dark place. I'll risk hoping for their survival against the warmth, humidity, and pests I may or may not be able to keep at bay.

I expect their secreted existence in the belly of my home to somehow buoy me over these long months ahead.

Like my treasured dahlias, we all need times of hiding, of secreting ourselves away in order to rest. These may be micro-breaks, like the extra few minutes we take in the bathroom in a busy household. Or, they may be more extended times of solitude we offer ourselves by going on retreat. They may  simply be the mornings we rise early to journal or pray.

Over the last month I have allowed myself to expand the edges of my own rest — a little earlier rise to write and practice yoga, a purchase of a book simply for enjoyment (featuring dahlias, of course!), less pressure about what I "produce." I'm inclined to resist such rest until I experience my own "killing frosts."

We hope our rest will be sweet, but it isn't always so. Perhaps this is the reason for our resistance. Sometimes what shows up in rest, like what shows up in meditation, is discomfort.

Regardless of what shows up in our rest, we can notice and become curious. I'd hoped to experience this rest as relaxing. Instead, the spaciousness I offered myself seemed to enlarge my awareness of all the tension carried in my body, of the ways my shoulders hunch to protect my heart and the tightness throughout my hips. To be honest, I've felt some frustration with my body and shame over this ongoing constriction, persisting through more yoga and my increased permission to, as Mary Oliver writes, "let the soft animal of my body love what it loves."

But recently in my early morning writing, my pondering opened up a new perspective. Any new life that comes into the world is brought about through a process of both expansion and contraction. And the contraction serves the expansion and is actually necessary! It is the means by which we gather ourselves, by which we concentrate our strength for the push required. In contracting our body is exercising its wisdom!

I recalled how vital it is to breathe through the pain of each contraction, rather than holding my breath, as I am so inclined to do! When I hold the breath, I risk becoming compulsively contracted, refusing the very oxygen that strengthens and supports my inevitable future expansion and release. This is a practice of receptivity, a focus on the abundance of resource (the very Breath of Life) which surrounds us and comes to fill us. It is also a practice in letting go, releasing gratitude and accepting the sufficiency of our efforts. We are, each of us, doing our best in trying circumstances.

For myself, and many of those with whom I work, there is an uptick in the last month of weariness, grief, or anxiety. For many, losses are accumulating. For others, they feel imminent. Some of us have recently lost family members to coping strategies that reached their limit, while others fear a phone call informing us of such. Some of us have lost work, while others right now must discern the future of the organizations we lead and the impending loss of employees whom we love and value. Those on the margins continue to bear more than their share of the pain of our brokenness. Each of us has been forced to again and again weigh the risks of in-person connection with anyone outside our immediate households.

Many women in labor choose a focal object to help them maintain focus: a painting,  or a word, or simply picturing their newborn child. What practice or object might serve to remind you of how fully you are supported? What grounds you in the freedom to both receive and release? What image speaks to you of the future waiting to be born and for which you are laboring?

I wonder what world they my dahlia tubers will greet next Spring when their eyes sprout and they once again raise their regal heads. Regardless of what they wake to, their beauty will be fed by their rest, and their hidden and quiet center. In early Spring I will lavishly attend to their soil with nutrients and abundant water. I will plant them will all of their supports in place. Because their beauty matters. It matters for me and it matters for the world.

And so does yours, Soul Friend. Whatever season of growth is yours today, receive the care that is coming your way. May you meet your own contractions— your own eccentricities in times of stress— with deep compassion and a gentle curiosity.  May you find the grace and sacred midwifing accompaniment to breathe through it, both literally and figuratively. May new life be ushered in through you.