Potential

Last year my gardening buddy Donna (well, I should probably make it clear from the start that Donna is not MY gardening buddy – Donna is THE gardening queen of south Orlando and I am not worthy to clean and polish her rubber clogs!) … anyway, having clarified this, let me continue… Er.. awhile ago Donna, the queen surprised me with a present. Well, sort of. I suspect that her choice of gift had something to do with a little history we share… Having killed one too many live plants she had been giving me over the years in a futile attempt to green up my brown thumb, she decided for a slightly different approach. So, instead of something alive that could be killed (and under my management one could be fully assured that it would be killed) she gave me a… potential! Being the esthetically endowed person that she is, she wrapped my potential in fancy fuchsia tulle and tied a black ribbon around it (I told you she was a classy lady!). She also accompanied the gift with the instructions which contained a photo. I suspect she must have gathered that I am not much of an instruction-reader and needed visual stimulation if her scheme was going to work. If you haven’t guessed already, inside the fancy wrapping was a bunch of seeds, four o’clock seeds, to be more precise.

Seeds…?!!! Why would she give me SEEDS?!!! I thought to myself. If I couldn’t keep ALIVE plants alive, how in the world does she imagine me coaxing anything out of some dry, shriveled up, dead seed?!!!

So, I set my potential on the counter. And, yes, you are right, it sat there. And it sat there… and it sat… and SAT… and SAT! From time to time I would look at it, and even scan the instructions with the photo of the pretty flowers tucked inside each tiny ball. I wondered how something as marvelous, and fragrant and colorful can be so neatly packed inside the ugly black seed?!!! I can’t quite say that I expected the plant to magically pop out and grow on the top of my counter inside my kitchen just from my notifying its presence there, but the thought sure sounded nice.

Needless to say, the seeds didn’t pop out on their own and no magical transformation took place. At least not as long as the seeds were sitting on top of the scratched up Formica.

Then, I remembered - duh?!!! - that this gift was about the potential! And, the only way the potential can become the actual is if it is taken out of the pretty wrapping, buried into the ground and left there to die. Then and only then can the magical transformation occur. Not on the top of the kitchen counter. Not even in the palm of my hand. But buried deep inside the soil where the mystery of death and life occur, invisible to the human eye, until the tiny tuft of green breaks the surface, giving evidence for all to see that there is a world of miracles laying dormant just within our reach.

"...The seed... is the Word of God.. .." Luke 8:11