It’s Thursday afternoon and I’m sitting at the table where a significant chapter of the Seed’s history began. It’s the same Starbucks table where, on Christmas Eve years ago, Danielle and I first entertained the idea of her eventually stepping into the directorship of Awakening Seed. It seems like such a long time ago, yet on the other hand merely a flash in the continuum of life. This is a familiar theme for me lately. Celebrating the Seed’s 40th birthday recently ignited the fires of memory. Reconnecting with alums, their parents, and alumni staff certainly drew me back through layers of Seed history.
I keep asking myself how a lifetime of making a school could go by so quickly. The past four decades have been a container filled with the fruits of intentions. It’s a container that holds our collective successes, failures, and unexpected detours. As I allow myself to look back, there are, not surprisingly, a few regrets around situations I wish I’d handled differently. In comparison, though, I know that thousands of lives, as well as the planet, have been significantly shaped for the better by the Seed’s presence in their personal histories. These past few weeks I’ve allowed myself to shift back and forth between what was, is now, and will be. It’s a fluid place through which I don’t want to rush. It reminds me of a way to view transitions I first discovered through the writing of the late Irish poet/philosopher, John O’Donohue (https://www.awakeningseedschool.org/2016/01/a-new-threshold/). In To Bless This Space Between Us, he wrote: “It is wise in your own life to be able to recognize and acknowledge the key thresholds; to take your time; to feel all the varieties of presence that accrue there; to listen inward with complete attention until you hear the inner voice calling you forward.”
Even though I still have plenty of time left working each day at the Seed, I do feel the future calling me forward. It will be a future filled with different work for the school, work that I have yet to imagine. It’s an interesting place in which to be, standing between what has been my life work for 40 years, and whatever it is I’m being called to do next. I know it will be different from my current day to day, and it will help sustain a long and healthy future for the school. One thing for sure, I do trust that whatever lies ahead will be revealed in its own time and expression. It’s how it works at the Seed, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.