The Muck That Is Essential to Your Being

Muck

Dark, dank, brown, sometimes black, muck is not pretty. The last two years have been full of muck: election messes, misbehaving politicians and public office holders, self-entitled humans, mock shamans destroying public property, a pandemic that split the country into the mask-wearers versus the mask-deniers (not to mention the vaccine-takers versus the vaccine-refusers), the mounting death toll from that pandemic, and the personal trials that resulted from the pandemic and the general calamities and realities of living on planet Earth.

No matter where you fall in the muck described above or in muck I failed to include, I do not doubt you have had some muck in your life. I know I have. I imagine my muck differs from yours in its details, but it’s still dark and dank, and it’s often been scary not knowing what lies beneath that murky surface and how and whether I shall rise. But here I am, and here you are, with 2021 taking a bow as it leaves or in some cases crying out loud as the door hits it in the butt as it, well, butts out. The New Year 2022 won’t ring in for several more hours, and I won’t be sorry to see it leave, but I would be remiss to not be grateful for some of the joys and the gifts life in 2021 brought me. I am grateful, but I am ready to welcome a new year.

The muck in the above photo is part of the ponds and streams at McKee Botanical Gardens in Vero Beach, Florida. You might not be aware of it, but this muck (as well as mine and yours) has a purpose. Beneath the surface of the muck is an entire world of living organisms. The muck provides a home and nourishment for some of the loveliest plants I’ve seen—the lotus and water lily. The lotus doesn’t spring to life from a seed sown in the ground. No. The lotus seeds lie fallow in the muck and when ready, they germinate, they grow, and they grace us with the near-unimaginable beauty of their blooms. Those flowers rise above the muck that was essential to bring about their being.

The muck we confront in our daily lives—and years if one wants to count 2020 and 2021—might not seem like it has a purpose, and sometimes it might not. However, at other times, like the lotus and the water lily, the muck of our lives can be a fertile medium in which we can grow. Of course, like the lotus and the water lily, we also have to rise above that muck to express our innate beauty. To show that we have surpassed those dark, dank, murky areas, we must reach and stretch above and beyond the muck that threatens to keep our spirits below the surface. Perhaps then we can catch and hold the joy that awaits us, just as the beauty of the lotus and water lily await their rise above the water’s surface.

My wish for you all is that you step through and out of the muck and into the sun where you can experience the joy and beauty that await you in 2022.

“You Yourself Got Bigger, Able to Hold More Grief”

November 2, 2021

“The ghosts and the pain didn’t lessen by confronting them, but they did grow more bearable—as if you yourself got bigger, able to hold more grief.” Mariah Reddick, the main character in The Orphan Mother by Robert Hicks, is grieving her son, Theopolis. That grief, a parent’s grief, is the most profound. Knowing this grief, her words resonated with me.

With the passage of time, our grief doesn’t get smaller, nor does it become easier to bear. Like the quote suggests, I believe we do, indeed, experience an expansion of sorts—some part of our heart and soul opens and continues to open. We gain the blessing of the ability to accommodate the days, months, years, decades . . . of mourning, of loss.

Grief comes; it always will, but we create space to hold it.

If we are even more blessed, we extend that space further and begin to hold others in their grief and longing so they, too, can do the same. Thus, they gain their own space to grieve and hold love.

This is the gift that Alexa gave me—a heart that didn’t close, but instead opened and continues to open. And in that space, I hold the finest of her offerings to me: Love, undying, enduring love.

No, dearest Lexie, I will never ever forget you. I will love you always and forever and continue to expand the place in my heart and life where I hold you.

Alexa Renee Provo: March 22, 1979—November 2, 1986