Day 7--Ripeness is All: growing toward maturity

What, in ill thoughts again? Men must endure
Their going hence even as their coming hither.
Ripeness is all.
Come on.
-King Lear, Act V, Scene ii

The storm took my favorite sunflower out last night. So life goes in the garden--easy come, easy go. The upside is that we now have two huge bouquets of the sunflowers gracing our tables.  The downside is the gaping hole in my garden and the disappointment of the finches.  The finches love their sunflower seeds, and once the flowers mature to seed, they are ever present.  That particular sunflower had many branches, so I was especially looking forward to the finches arriving in force.

Tilting here--the storm cracked it right in half!

I had a friend a few years ago comment on her growing interest in birds: 

You know, when I was in my 20's I couldn't care less about the birds.  My parents would watch the birds, and I would think to myself "get a life!" But now that I'm getting older, suddenly, I'm noticing the birds...I'm turning into my parents!

She said it much crasser and more earnestly than this, and her comment caught me just right.  I laughed until my stomach ached, which is sadly, a rare occurrence in my 40's. Bellyaching laughs came easier when I was younger.  Now, I notice when I laugh that long and hard.

But, I don't mind admitting to loving simple things, like the finches.  The finches bring the sunflower's life full circle.  Their lively arrival transforms the bloom's passing into something I look forward to.

May my own life come to a head with such clear purpose someday.  For that reason, I also don't mind admitting to my increasing gray hairs.  My irregularly memory.  My growing need for quiet.  They are steps on a longer journey that has inherent purpose. 

Our culture is definitely anti-aging, to the point of youthfulness becoming an obsession, but growing up and growing old isn't so bad if there is purpose to the growth. After all, isn't growing the point?  What good is a sunflower seedling if it remains a seedling?

Paul's plea to the church in Ephesus expresses such a hope for their maturity:

"As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.... So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. 

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ." -Ephesians 4: 1, 11-15

I may not look forward to all aspects of growing older, but I love the thought of not being tossed back and forth by the waves... There is a centeredness that comes with maturity that I much prefer to the whims of youth.  Sometimes--only sometimes--I am even content with my own limitations. Oddly enough, I'm finding that such limits can be freeing.  The Giving Tree was happy to have something to give, and the sunflower is ennobled by its maturity with the coming of the finches.