Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Harvest



Today is a day to harvest the grapes that are growing over my patio. The birds have been enjoying them for some time, and it seems a shame to not taste any of them myself ~ even though this is not really a terrific climate to grow grapes that are truly sweet…
Other years I have made grape juice out of it; chances are that is going to happen this year as well.

Another perspective is that the abundant amount of grapes is part and parcel of my more personal harvest this year. A bonus handed to me for all the hard work I have put in, as the seasons moved from one into another. Taking this into consideration, I’m double grateful for this time of harvest!

Pondering that thought it does seem funny how the return to our labor ~ to the energy expended ~ can come in such unexpected ways. Especially since I haven’t given my patio and the plants growing there much thought this year. My attention was needed elsewhere. And while there doesn’t seem to be a big ‘return’ with those things I have spent my time and energy on, suddenly I find there are buckets full of grapes, right there in my own patio…

It is unexpected as we tend to look at things from a more two-dimensional perspective of cause and effect. “This is what I am working on, so this is where the results will manifest.”
And when they don’t, we are easily discouraged as we have worked so hard for so little result.

But perhaps we are looking at it the wrong way. Maybe, when we are making the most of walking our personal paths, planning and doing whatever it is we feel we need to plan and do, the results come back to us in a more multi-dimensional way. By suddenly finding ourselves being in the right place at the right time to meet this person we were meant to meet. Or by finding that we have, often unknowingly, accomplished something that ~ while it is truly nice ~ never was a ‘blip’ on our radar.

To notice the full result of our labor over a full year, we may have to look not just at those things we know we have been working on, but also become aware of the little ~ and sometimes big ~ bonuses that may come our way from places where we least expected them to come from…
And then to not just recognize them, but also being grateful for it!
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