Roots and Seeds

This is my favorite time of year in my little garden. What has been an unbroken coating of snow and ice becomes a smooth horizontal plane of mud and flattened leaf litter. Even before the last snows have fallen the spring bulbs bravely put up their shoots- as of this morning I can report my snowdrops are in full bloom, and I have 6 clumps of purple crocuses.

Spring is a hopeful time, because we can see with our own eyes that what appeared barren can suddenly be transformed with new life, because those plants which have appeared to die turn out to have been only dormant, and later in the season plants that have indeed died will be replaced by their young.



Many of you have told talked about needing hope, and especially needing hope as we get older. Spring happens because all those plants have a plan for the future. Plants put a lot of resources and intelligent design behind their hopes for the future. Today I would like us to take inspiration from our plant siblings, not only to have hope for a future, but to consider how we choose to invest in our own future, and the future of our the next generations, investing in hope.

These early spring flowers I see in my yard this morning are not emerging from seeds, but from their roots, whether bulbs[i] or rhizomes. The strategy of these plants is to store nourishment and nutrients all year long into their roots, and when the winter comes, the plants die back to the ground, returning maximum resources to the root. Somewhere in that root system is also the plan for how to grow all those above ground parts anew, knowledge of the whole cycle. An because they have stored up resources, and a brilliant plan evolved over many, many cycles, they are ready to burst firth first thing in spring, flowering early, and then spending the rest of the growing season gathering resources for the next cycle.

This is a solid investment, or savings plan. Chances are pretty good that a bulb or rhizome will come back the following year if conditions are normal. Setting aside energy and resources for the future is always a good idea, but it becomes more important we age. We tuck something away for our future selves, for hard winters so we are ready to start growing again with the time is right. I’m sure you can think of a time in your own life when you thought “thank goodness I put this aside for later, for right this moment” whether that was a backup jug of dish soap, or retirement savings.

We do this as a beloved community too- we not only put aside investments for hard times, but our tradition itself is an investment in the future. We know this UU faith, which is over 400 years old, has not only gotten us through this pandemic, but also wars, like the Civil war and the American Revolution, has gotten hundreds of thousands of people through their individual struggles and transitions, and our collective struggles and changes. I had always through of our tradition as a big tree, all those hundreds of years of growth evolving slowly over time a beautiful form that shelters and feeds us. But right now I am thinking about the importance of those roots, how even when a beautiful mature plant is cut way back, is diminished by hard times, it stores the wisdom and nutrients in its roots to spring back when it is time to grow again.

This wisdom is in the ancient Taoist text the Tao Te Ching,

“Though everything is flourishing, each will return to its root,
Returning to the root means stillness, and
Stillness marks the cycle of life.” [Translated by David Hong Cheng, 2000, Chapter 16]

I feel like this is what we have been doing these past 2 years as a congregation, returning to our root, returning to the source of all our wisdom, to nutrients stored up both for hard times and for future growth.

The cycle of flourishing from our root and returning to the root is playing out beautifully all around us right now as we see those tulip an crocus shoots coming up from bare ground. But this method of perpetuating and renewing life has limits- it is preparing to do the exact same thing in the exact same place for as long as that place can sustain it.

But in this dramatically changing world -- climate change, political change, economic change, cultural change --we also prepare our legacy for an unknown and evolving future. This is what seeds are for. For example, many kinds of seeds are spread by birds, and as their migration patterns change with climate change, so they will take with them the seeds of the food they will need in future generations. This is an important time for us to be thinking about our seeds- as individuals, as a community and as a faith tradition. I’m not talking here about biological offspring, but the values and wisdom and traditions that are life affirming, the seeds of a world where each and every being has inherent worth and dignity, where we live in harmony with the interconnected web of life. Some seeds we will plant close to our roots, to perpetuate this local ecosystem of which we are a part, but let us also consider the seeds we scatter far and wide.

Seeds are both a risky and a necessary investment. In Hidden Life of Trees Author Peter Wohlleben theorizes that a beach tree which grows for 400 years will produce a total of about 1.9 million beechnuts, and of those exactly one will grow to be a full-grown tree, which is considered a smashing success. Its genetic wisdom lives on even when its nutrients are returning to the soil. That beech tree will never see it’s successful offspring full grown, that is the point. The tree is investing not in itself, but in its genetic wisdom, in its legacy and the contributions it's offspring will make to future ecosystems. Let us not hold back from planting seeds because not all of them sprout, as Emily Kedar writes:

What good gardener
Would waste the gift of seed
For a sliver of doubt
Wedged inside her mind?

I want dirt
Under my
Fingernails
And all my
Seed packets
Empty.

Let seeds be a metaphor for those million tiny bits of wisdom and caring we plant far and wide, knowing that most of them will never result in even one new member to a UU church, but may help preserve our special wisdom, like universal love, or democracy, or reason and science, for future generations, in times and places where they are most ready to grow and most needed for the evolving ecosystem.

What are the seeds we need to plant now as our legacy?

Consider the legacy of unconditional love- how people who experience love at key moments in their development grow and flourish in certain ways, and when people are not supported in love, say in their childhood, or formative years, or during a trauma or transition, the lack of love also ripples out into their lives.

Consider our interconnected web of life, how when we interact with our ecosystems with respect for non-human life, and for the wisdom for our complex ecosystems, those systems flourish and endure, but when we build and harvest thinking only of our own short term gain, this too ripples out in toxic waters and barren soils and climate change.

Consider Democracy, (our 5th principle) a value so basic I assumed it would flourish forever; we are learning anew now how precious our living democracy is. What seeds can we plant to ensure democracy grows and thrives into the future generations?

A seed needs the blueprint for a grown up plant and for the whole lifecycle of that plant. It also needs the nutrients to get the first sprout started, and it needs a system of propulsion since a sprout literally cannot grow in its parent’s shadow. As we consider the seeds we want to carry our legacies, consider all these things, the enduring wisdom, the nutrients needed for new growth, and how it will be propelled far and near.

Gardeners know that even with all the best care and perfect conditions, not all seeds come up. And of the seeds that sprout, even fewer will grow to be mature plants. We sow seeds, again and again, even when we can’t see them sprout. And we nurture the seeds of our tradition planted by others to shelter and support them into maturity.

If you have some seeds handy, I encourage you to grab them now as a physical reminder and object of blessing and meditation. I invite you now into a time of contemplation- hold your seeds in your hand and ask yourself what seeds you most want to sow, what legacy you want to plant now so it grows and thrives even after you are gone. Your own legacy, and that of our faith tradition. Let’s enter a moment of silence

You might let the question follow you around this week, or this season, this discernment sometimes grows slowly and takes time to become clear. Until you are ready to plant them, set your seed Pack somewhere where you can see it regularly as you ponder this question.

If you are looking for sources of hope in your lives, look around as spring unfolds, noticing that all that flourishing and blossoming happens because all those plants have a plan for the future. Today I would like us to take inspiration from our plant siblings, not only to have hope for a future, but to consider how we choose to invest in our own future, and the future of our the next generations, investing in hope.