Rebirth

Rebirth

The best thing about birthdays is it is a chance to think about beginnings. We all come into the world helpless and dependant. By the time we are old enough to take care of ourselves someone else has invested lots of time and money to make sure we survive growing up. Then we might get a chance to take care of somebody else and help them make it to the point the can take care of another generation. A birthday is a starting point, but it can also be another beginning. It’s a day we can stop and look at the past year and see what we want to do the next year.

A rebirth can take place at any time, not just on a birthday. The miracle of rebirth is always present in nature, and an example or two can help us understand the process as it could also occur in us. I’ve recently planted some pine nuts, and they have already sprouted. Even though I planted them upside down, they are correcting my mistake, sending up the main root and turning back into the soil. If we think about the single pine nut and the potential it can have, it makes me wonder what our own potential could be. These pine nuts were for sale at the side of the road, and the guy who sold them to me wanted to roast them. I had other plans. Where a bag of pine nuts could have been a snack, I intend to turn them into a little grove of pine trees in the back yard. I might make some of them in to little bonsai plants, and since I sell stuff on Ebay, they will probably end up somewhere else in the world. They may grow to full size and produce pine nuts of their own.

The dependable way in which seeds sprout and grow into full grown plants is amazing to me. No one can make a seed, but every time we plant a seed, we have the expectation they will grow. We don’t expect them to grow into something different, so maybe here is a lesson for us. Can we grow into something we aren’t, and who decides what we are and are not?

Another exciting example of rebirth is some impatiens flower plants I had in the yard last year. They were really from the year before, and I had kept them alive over the winter and done some cuttings. This isn’t a new plant, but a part of the old plant. These flowers are sensitive to cold, and they have great stems for cutting. I took longer stems, cut them, put some rooting enzyme on them and put them in a new little pot. By spring I had dozens more to plant, and they all came from the same few flowers I dug up in the fall and kept in the greenhouse.

I did the same thing last fall. I dug up quite a few of the second generation flowers to prepare to get a third generation ready for next summer. I was surprised how many plants I had, and they were flowering very well as the snow fell. Unfortunately, the cat bumped the plug for the heater for the greenhouse before I noticed, and it got below freezing for a couple of nights. About two-thirds of the flowers died back to the soil, and the rest just died. The amazing thing is I still have some to work with, and spent the weekend getting them cleaned up and repotted. I should have a record number of bright purple impatiens ready for the spring.

It’s the same with this program. “Abundance” is the root stock of optimism, and I want a little bit of that idea to get planted and nourished in your life. I know when you stop and think about all the things we have to be thankful for in this modern world, your part of this growing idea will flourish, and before we know it, there will be a bounty of thankfulness. I do it in the hopes that I will be truly conscious of giving thanks, and remember to acknowledge the blessings of living in a world where many of us live a standard of living far above the royalty in the past.

Stop at least once each day and pay attention to the wonders all about us, that have become commonplace to us because we wake up every day and they are available to us. A thankful attitude will help you understand how truly blessed we are. Be reborn to the miracle of life every day you are given, because there will be those who weren’t given this gift of one more day. Get out there and grow into the real you today.

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