Food for Thought

by Richard K., SCA-San Luis Obispo, CA

Seeds for Change

We’ve read many times over stories about how trees and
plants are able to grow in seemingly impossible locations —
like out of the crack in a rock or up through a concrete
driveway. Up on the street above a member’s house there’s a
crack in the pavement about a foot from the edge. Each year two
or three poppy plants grow up from that crack and put out
beautiful blooms. It seems that the Universe has provided each
seed with a message about its function — to grow upward into a
plant and bloom so as to produce more seeds to continue its kind.

We each have within us similar seeds — seeds to grow and
change our lives from what they are now or from what they have
been. No matter how much internal rock or garbage or concrete
might be covering those seeds, their message is to grow and
flower into a new life — a new beginning. With a lot of
nurturing — warmth, light, moisture — they do grow and flower.

Nurturing… just where does that come from? We can’t go
down to the nursery and buy a bag of it like we can fertilizer
for plants and trees. No, that’s right. The nurturing for OUR
seeds comes from a different source. Our Twelve-step Program
provides a lot of it… the principle behind those steps; the
people who are in the Program with us; the safety and comfort of
that meeting room we keep coming back to. Our faith in some
Higher Power who will, when asked and accepted, guide us and
help us get all that rock and garbage and concrete off of our
seeds provides more. That’s what the first three steps are all
about: realizing we can’t do it ourselves; that Something can;
letting that Something take over. Not letting that Something do
it all, but letting that Something provide the answers for us to
act on; and change and grow on. That’s all we need to make a
new beginning for ourselves. With that Something in there
rooting for us, we have all the strength we need to go and get
all that stuff off of our seeds.

Once those seeds are out of the dark gloom and feel the
warmth and light of the good which is in all of us, they grow
and flourish and bloom into the new beings which we’ve had
inside ourselves all this time. And it’s never too late for us
to work and change. Never too late at all.

A new beginning! Just the thought of it can be scary.
But, considering what we’ve all been through, and will continue
to go through if we and things we are involved with don’t
change, the scariness can turn into real elation. We have that
Something, that Higher Power — to help us. That’s all we need.

Return to SCAnner Highlights