Laundry Line Divine

My Story of ReBirth and my Scarlet Runner Bean

We snuggled our big brown beans, rather speckled like an heirloom breed chicken egg, in to nests of wet paper towels in small sandwich size plastic bags. There they would germinate while the rest of us delved in to vibrating visionary collage at Kripalu. I was determined to get every drop of goodness from my days in retreat. I let my seed rest on a windowsill. When the air was too chilly there we moved them on to the floor.

Every day I handled my seed. As I cut and laid out photomontages I peeped at my seed hoping to see sprouts. Other seeds were advancing along rapidly. Mine lay like a cold wet rock in the towel. I watered it anyway. It began to create it’s own condensation, so I knew something was happening within that reddish brown thing.

By the end of our 4 days creating collages and doing yoga, most everyone’s seeds were sending out tiny roots, fingering the interior of the bag for nourishment. Two had cracked open and sent out sprouts. Mine lay quietly.

I neatly piled my scraps, collected my painted papers and my triptych. I bustled my tin shrine in to my overfilled canvas bag. Off I went home to integrate 4 days of fine wholesome meals being prepared for me, daily whirlpools, labyrinth walks and sharing hara time with a group of women. It was a sacred time together.

I placed my bean bag on the sill above the kitchen sink, where, besides my bed, I spend the most amount of time staying in one place. I watered my seed. It slowly generated rootlets, fine white strands of hairy root growth. Finally a green head poked the bag up a bit and I knew the time had come to pot it up. I had heard tales of everyone else’s beans in pots with sticks for the vining bean to climb.

I collected soil from my own garden; let it sit in the sun to warm in a pot I could carry in to the house without too much mess. Finally, I set the seed in there, the sprout a good 1 ½ inches and thick and hearty looking. I tucked in some soaked and scratched nasturtium seeds too, imagining a pot of bean vine circled with brilliant orange blooms in July.

By morning it was dead. Black. Curled back to the soil like a deflated balloon, no sign of life. Was this the metaphor I’d have to make sense of as I put my own meals together for my family and prepared for Easter? These days are a challenge for me as we create our own spiritual practice away from the traditions of our upbringings.

Then, on the Saturday before Easter, as I watered the seeds, because I wanted those nasturtiums to sprout, there was another sprout heading straight to heaven from the center of the pot. This was no nasturtium. This was the scarlet runner bean having it’s own resurrection.

On Easter morning, while I was ruminating over how to speak to my kids over lunch about this Holy Day and what it can mean for us, I saw how the bean sprout had grown easily 6 inches in one day. If I had sat still next to it and watched I would have seen it track up away from the moist soil under which the egg-like seed safely sat.

I like to see life in life. I like to find sacred solace in nature. I like to have metaphor-strewn stories to give my kids palpable roots to cling to as they create their own foundations of faith, their own journeys with the sacred. There I had it in my Scarlet Runner bean. I talked about how when things look all but dead, dead, just plain done with living how we can each lean in to all the things that nourish us deeply. And how, with a bit of water, sun and kindness, even at our bleakest moments we can nurture ourselves to life. We can be reborn.