I walked in the orchard with River at the weekend: he is old enough now to remember that there was a ‘last year’, and that last year we saw the apples hanging from the trees. I had plucked one down and cut it in half with my penknife so that we could see the pips inside, and thus had run into a conversation about how apple seeds grow apple trees, and apple trees grow apples. And so, ad infinitum.
He stopped, surprised, because now there were no apples, not leaves on the trees. ‘Where is the orchard’, he asked. ‘All around us’, i replied. It’s in the buds.
And so we looked at the buds, just starting to burst on the ends of the bare branches. I talked about how the buds would form leaves, the blossom would come, and hence the apples once more.
We stood in the orchard: the potential of the orchard. Among the mulched remains of the fallen leaves, upon last years apple seeds.
Humility may be like the seed, the bud, the leaf, or the tree.
It may be the potential for action: the seed is not the tree, compressed, but rather is the potential of the tree.
It may be the bud: just discernible, but small. The beginning of it’s realisation.
It may be like the leaf: small at the individual levels, but when held broadly forming a canopy that shelters us all.
It may be the tree: magnificent, strong, wise. Waiting to fall.
julianstodd
Julian Stodd's Learning Blog 