A few years ago, I read Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle about her year-long “experiment” to eat locally for one year. In it, I learned about braiding garlic and how clumsy turkeys mate. I also learned that asparagus have quite a unique manner of growing: they display no sign of change, growth, renewal whatsoever for weeks and then you walk outside one morning, and the whole field has sprouted with bright green spires.
The metaphor of the asparagus is pretty strong: while the field may look fallow, you can bet that there is a host of action happening beyond your vision, and one day, all that change will pop forth fully grown as Athena.
Sometimes, I feel like a “typical” plant, growing slowly but visibly with every passing day. I can notice the changes in my wardrobe, that I’ve begun doing my dishes more regularly(!), or that the books I’m reading have a particular theme to them.
But, sometimes, I pray to be asparagus.
Because then, at least, an absence of obvious growth doesn’t feel disheartening or soddening. Sometimes the work I put in has no clear result, whether on finance or romance, the line of a song or the filming of a vlog. Sometimes, it’s just plain work… and sometimes I don’t wanna.
So I have to remember that I, or my projects, may simply be asparagus, working miracles I cannot yet glimpse. I need to have faith that Nature works its own time-frame, its own intelligence, and that one day, the field will blossom gloriously. As will the next, and the next.
Happy Spring, Everyone!
Owning Voice 