On Growth and Letting the Light Get In

The storms that came through earlier this summer took down a few trees around our house. And while I certainly wouldn’t have chosen for them to come down the way they did, I have been fascinated by what has happened since.

There is more light. More air seems to move through the yard. The grass is growing in places where it struggled before. The butterfly bushes seem happier. The tea olives are filling out. 

In short, things that were already there – things I had planted and hoped would grow – suddenly have a little more room to become what they were trying to become all along.

I’ve been thinking about that this week because sometimes, there can be so much growing around us that we don’t even notice what is getting crowded out – AND, not necessarily by bad things.

That’s the part that has stayed with me.

A tree is a good thing. Shade is a good thing. Growth is a good thing. But enough good things growing in the same place can still make it difficult for light to get through.

I wonder if our lives work that way too? 

We spend so much time thinking about what we need to add. Another commitment. Another opportunity. Another practice we should begin. Another relationship to tend. Another thing we want to accomplish.

More growth.

But every once in a while, perhaps we need to walk around the landscape of our lives and notice the overgrowth and the undergrowth.

What is flourishing right now?

What seems crowded?

Where are you having to work awfully hard just to get a little light?

What has quietly started growing since something else ended?

What might need a little more room?

Wendell Berry begins his poem “How to Be a Poet” with wonderfully simple instructions: 

“Make a place to sit down.

Sit down. Be quiet.”

Maybe that’s a good late-summer practice for all of us. Before the calendars fill up. Before school and meetings and practices and programs and all the good things of fall begin competing for the light, take a walk around the landscape of your life.

Sit down, pay attention.

Not everything needs to be cut down. Not everything needs to be pruned. Maybe we simply need to notice what is growing where. 

Notice. 

Where is the light getting through?

Where could you use a little more air?

What good thing might have grown so large that another good thing no longer has room?

And perhaps most importantly: What is already there, quietly waiting for enough light to flourish?

Y’all, I don’t think God is always asking us to grow more. Sometimes the invitation may simply be to make a little room. To clear away what has become crowded. To let some light in. And then to pay attention to what grows.

Now, together, let’s sit down. Be quiet. Look around. And yes, watch the Light find its way in. Amen.