PG #97: Seed, bud, grow, bloom, seed

Last week Melbourne’s sky lit up with a spectacular annual shower of meteors, bright Geminids streaking from horizon to horizon. Each year around mid-December, Earth travels through debris left by the asteroid 3200 Phaethon, which orbits the sun every 1.4 years. What interests me is that the event is cyclical, but each year the earth’s orbit shows us a different view. Our perspective on the event changes with time and context.

It is through cycles that I have oriented myself. In a year where time once again disappeared into day after day of homebound sameness, perhaps you also discovered time is not linear. Perhaps you noticed or became re-acquainted with the cycles too, be it seasons, stars, project rhythms or menstrual cycles.

Group life cycles have been a focus for me this year, both as a facilitator and being facilitated. I experienced and witnessed the cycle of forming, norming, storming, performing, adjourning and reforming in many different contexts. I have seen people find togetherness, drift apart, find resolutions, change orbit and self-organise into new formations, beginning the cycle again.

2021 can’t end soon enough, but this year I’m not bookending or wrapping it up in a neat package – there is no full stop. This year’s lessons have been hard – life learnings of grief and loss – but they have been accompanied by true and bright moments of joy and love. Even though there are things I would rather forget, I am resting back into the incredibly complex yet staggeringly simple circle of life on planet earth.

It reminds me that we are constantly in a state of transformation and regeneration. And like composting, where matter breaks down over time and turns into nutrient rich soil to fertilise new life, I hope to find renewal and new ways of being from the messiness, hardship and uncertainty of this year.

Seed, bud, grow, bloom, seed. As this yearly cycle moves to a new phase, I offer a few reflective questions on your own cycles.
What are you offering up to the compost heap?
Have you noticed the things that are seeding for you?
Where in life are you blooming?
May we all find the courage to embrace our next cycle around the sun, whatever it may hold.

Stay safe, bright and kind.