Apples in a Seed

Chrysalis goes on two school camping trips each year. I go on most of them. After the skits at the Saturday evening campfire, I tell a story. Here is a paraphrase of the story I told this week.

“When I was teaching the eighth graders, I would occasionally give them a short piece of wisdom to write a reflection on. One year I gave them an old folk saying that I loved the moment I first encountered it.

You can count the number of seeds in an apple
but you can’t count the number of apples in a seed.

“I asked the kids to write a reflection on that. The next day, when we discussed this, it became obvious that for the kids, the saying was something only about apples and seeds.

“What I love about teaching is that every word, every action is an experiment and the feedback from the students reveals the results of those experiments. So that evening, as I mulled over the failure of that experiment, I remembered something from my childhood that might help my students reach a deeper understanding of that folk saying. So the next day, I told them this story.

“When I was a kid, the campus of Whitman College lay in between my house and my elementary school. Every morning I would walk through the campus to school and after school I would slowly wander my way back through on my way home.

“One day (I was probably in fourth grade), I was walking home with a friend and we saw eight college men (really big to a fourth grader) playing touch football so we sat down on the grass and watched. After about five minutes, one of these big men asked us if we wanted to join their game. Join their game? Play with these big men? Inconceivable…but we did. We played on opposite teams and for the most part ran around among them as they played. But then, on one play, the man passed the ball to me.

“I can still remember how time slowed down as the ball arced towards me. ‘Oh, please let me catch his pass. Please let me show them I am worthy of their trust. Oh, please, please let me catch the ball’ as the ball drew closer and closer. My arms were out and I caught the ball. I actually caught the ball! My big teammates congratulated me.

“But what stayed with me was how it felt when that man invited us to play with them. That he saw me as a fellow person and cared about me. That I was worthy of his respect. That I was part of his bigger world. So now, during recess and lunch at Chrysalis, I play Frisbee with the kids because of that experience. His inviting us to play planted a seed in me which has grown into a tree and every time I play with a kid is an apple from that tree. Perhaps a seed in one of those apples will take root in one of those kids and grow into a tree that will somehow drop apples to the next generation of kids. And that man probably planted seeds in other people that have grown good fruit. And maybe that college man invited us into the game because some person a hundred years ago showed kindness that planted a seed in him. If so, how many apples have grown from that century-old seed, how many more apples will grow because of that seed? You can’t count the number of apples in a seed.

“That story unlocked the wisdom in that folk saying for my students. They got it. So when I went home, I reflected pleasurably on this successful experiment. But as I did, another memory came to mind that I realized I also needed to share. So the next morning, I shared the following story with my class.

“I was coming home from school with Craig Gibbon so I must have been in second grade. We were on our hands and knees by Lakum Duckum observing the snails. Lanny Mansfield, a fourth grader, came up to us and asked us what we were doing. We stood up and started explaining about the snails. He pushed us into the pond and ran away laughing. I stood there in water chest-deep stunned. This would not happen in my world. I felt humiliated.

“Some time later, Billy Rhodes and I were walking home along the campus creek. We came to a spot and, on impulse, I pushed Billy in. The moment I saw his face, I regretted it. Our friendship did not grow anymore after that. I did not know why I did that. But now my older self wonders whether I was trying to figure out why Lanny had pushed me in. Was there some secret joy one experienced when one did that? And that leads me to wonder whether Lanny planted a seed in me that grew into the apple of pushing Billy in. Maybe I planted a seed in Billy that grew into him pushing someone else in. Maybe someone else had pushed Lanny Mansfield in and planted the seed that grew into him pushing us in. You can’t count the number of apples in a seed.

“Seeds growing into trees that produce apples full of seeds, some of which grow into trees that produce apples full of yet more seeds. It has been going on and on and on. Everything we do has the potential of planting a seed in the world, in someone’s life. Some seeds grow to produce good fruit; some produce rotten fruit. We each have the challenge of trying to make as many of our actions be ones that bear good fruit.”

Snippets

Two moments I shared with Benicia
Benicia was a wonderful dog. She understood a lot of language plus she and I had a telepathic connection. For example, I would take her on long walks out on the public lands where I do my rain walks. She would cruise and sniff about, often at distance, while I would focus on how the land was responding to my Gaia plays. After 15 or 20 minutes, I would think of checking where she was and look up. Almost every time, she was loping towards me, coming to check in on me. We’d re-establish contact and then both go off on our own again.

Two to three months ago, she started sneezing blood. Ice on her muzzle would stop the bleeding. We took her to the vet, thinking it was a foxtail up her nose. They couldn’t detect anything. They provided a Chinese herb that controlled the bleeding. But something remained wrong and finally we went down to UC Davis’s veterinarian teaching hospital. We learned that she had a nasal tumor (something I had never heard of) and she had probably one to two weeks of life left. The tumor progressed quickly. When she started displaying signs of increasing discomfort and inability to breathe adequately, we scheduled a vet to come so Benicia could die at home in our arms. The vet could come the next Wednesday.

On Sunday, I was cutting brush. Benicia was with me. We sat down together for me to rest. Her imminent passing dominated my mind. I thought she deserved to know what was happening so I told her.

I told her that she was sick and there was nothing we could do to cure her. That the sickness was going to kill her and that it would cause her to suffer for several days. That we loved her so much. We didn’t want to lose her. We were so grateful for what her wonderful spirit had brought into our lives. But we didn’t want her to suffer either. So we were going to end her life in the gentlest way we knew. So, Benecia, you only have a few days of life left and then you will die and be gone.

When I finished saying my explanation, she shifted her sitting position, turning slightly away. I could still see the angled left side of her face as her eyes looked into the distance. Her posture and presence communicated that she understood what I had said and this was very heavy news and she needed time alone for the consequences of this news to fully settle in.

That was the first moment I wanted to share. The way she turned away into herself convinced me that I did the right thing letting her know what was coming.

The second (and sweeter) moment was the next evening. We went for a walk (she loved our walks) up to the top of the hill. On the way back down, she ran ahead and then she stopped. The way she stopped and then stood still listening for a long time communicated the complete thought, “What a blessing it is to stand in this spring evening’s dusk and hear the tree frogs calling to mate. How grateful I am to be part of the conscious wonder of this world.”

Bird Droppings on the Windowsill
This spring when the weather was warm and we’d leave our car and truck windows open, bird droppings appeared on their windowsills.

One day while outside I heard a tapping. I looked over and a male Oak Titmouse was standing on one of the windowsills fluttering up to peck the rival male he saw in the mirror. His reflection was exactly as aggressive as he was. He went on and on as revealed by his droppings. I eventually made little covers for our rearview mirrors to spare the titmice from this reflective stress and toil.