I sit at the picnic bench alone, my eyes cast to the ground.  Then I hear his voice, my Lord’s voice, behind me.

“The ground won’t change just by you looking at it,” he says.  “You will need to get off the bench and work it. What you put into it is what you will get out of it.  Go ahead. Break up the ground. Bring the soft soil to the top, and then let’s take a look at what to plant.”

“What if, after turning the soil over, I leave it to just grow what is in it.  I’m not so sure I need to plant new seed, Lord.”

“You’ve certainly done enough planting throughout your lifetime,” he says.  “There is quite a mix of what lays in the dirt, of what is mixed with the soil.”

“I think it’s time to let that come out, let it grow, and then see what to do after that.  I don’t see a need to throw anything new into the ground right now,” I say.

“You have spoken well,” the Lord tells me. “You have spoken well, and that’s what we will do.”

We sit on the ground and break up the dry dirt, revealing the fresh, cool dirt that was stuck under the dry top layer.  We let it sit as we stretch out on the ground, eyes upward to the sky, and I drift to sleep.  What will show up? What is in the ground?

“Hidden treasures,” the Lord says to me, answering the questions on my heart. “You have planted and stored much. Now let it produce fruit. Now let its life force come out to give you the nourishment you need to finish out this day, this period of time.  I’ll wait with you.”

It strikes me that the ambiguity of this conversation gives me comfort. So often, I want to know the specifics. I demand to know the answers. But ambiguity has its place too, and right now I am comfortable with that.  I think I am in a metamorphosis. Like the plaque on my wall in front of me: “just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly.”

I have the feeling that I will soon wake up, no longer a caterpillar, but a butterfly, ready to take flight into new fields, new territory. Ready, . . . having discovered who I really am . . . ready to try out these foreign wings. Ready to leave the cocoon that has shielded me, nourished me, guarded me, to glide into the heavens.

“Ah,” I say to the Lord.  “This is why we are not planting anything new.  All that I am for this phase of life is already in the ground, already within me.  It is merely waiting for the strength to break through its shell into new life.”

“Yes.  Let it be so, my daughter. I will wait with you, and I will fly with you.”