In ward Journeys  — An aspect of sacrifice.

Today was my day to finally give up and harvest the last of my luffa sponges to get them ready for Yule gifts.  I had been waiting for them to “dry” on the vine.  But with all the rain we have had they were just not cooperating.   Several months ago I had taken a fine specimen down stairs to dry out so I could get the seeds for next year.   While gathering the ones outside to make some Christmas/Yule Gifts  I remembered the one down stairs.   I made my way to the corner of the basement where I had hung it up near the heating unit thinking that that would be the driest area.

Gathering seeds is something I had watched my grandparents do in my early life.  For example tomato seeds were gathered by cutting open one of your best tomatoes and gutting out the seeds.  You put the seeds on thin cloth, news paper or later paper towels.  After they dried you would scrape them off.  Before the advent of baggies, my grandmother would take pieces of waxed paper and wrap the seeds up in that.  Then they would be neatly labeled on the freezer/masking tape used to hold the whole thing together.

I stand in the basement looking at this luffa that I want to get the seeds from and it is still perfectly green..  it hasn’t dried at all.  In order  to get the seeds from it I will have to “sacrifice the whole thing” since it is refusing to dry enough to just shake out the seeds and still use the luffa.  I thought on this briefly and thought about our ancestors and their lore of the fallen Corn King.    It brought a new realization to me in the thinking processes of some of those ancestors and the “sacrifice” of the best  to bring forth new life.  Our ancestors had to chose the best of the crops in order to get the best seeds, and much of the time you sacrificed the item to get the seeds.  Those seeds represented the hope and continued life in the new year.  It has helped me further understand on a personal basis the thoughts of our ancestors.  The sacrifice of the best, the king, for the future of the people.   I wonder what I will need to sacrifice in the coming year  for my “continued life.”  Most of the time I hold on to the status quo,  the whole time knowing the truth of change, and how we must sacrifice if to know one else but ourselves.   Oh but, change and growth is so scary because it is the unknown.

Bless us all now in this time of darkness and change before we emerge anew in the spring.