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The chickweed from the garden…she delivers herself all soft and tender and cool with sprinkles of star white flowers. For all the years past I anticipated her arrival, I watched for her, I smiled down at her when she made her entrance into the garden. I talked to her and communed with her and gathered her and helped her release her medicine into this realm. I applauded her boldly living her dharma and became intertwined with it but…the spring of 2017 was different…this time felt more sacred…I knew this jar of tincture I filled with her essence would have to wait on me for more than a year… the sacredness of this effort was magnified because I knew the next spring I would not be in the garden to pay homage to her…she would arrive…excited to offer her potent magic and I would not be there to welcome her…I knew she would look for me every day to gather her goodness but I would not arrive…I knew she would not be able to hold on until I got home and that as quietly as she appeared she would dissolve back into the massive womb of Mother Earth taking with her the dharma that only she could wield. I knew she would not hold it against me…I knew she could not feel any disappointment…I knew that she would continue along her journey and knew that it was me that had been introduced to grace…
According to some of the research offered in Wikipedia, “the root of the Sanskrit word dharma is "dhri", which means "to support, hold, or bear". It is the thing that regulates the course of change by not participating in change, but that principle which remains constant.” Chickweed understood this so much more deeply than me. Her dharma, her Medicine, held and supported her…her dharma remained constant regardless of whether I was there or not. You see I had experienced a wide moment as I sat with the inescapable reality that chickweed would live her dharma with or without me...she lived in grace. I had fallen prey to my own enchantment thinking that somehow she needed me. She would come and go within the entrance and exit of the spring and her medicine followed her. My intersection with her journey was simply one of being a facilitator…like when you hold a door open for someone…but her intersection with my journey was one of teacher. The wisdom in her lesson for me was “you must decide to live your dharma no matter what…whether you have support or not, whether anyone understands, whether others approve or disapprove…living your dharma with no attachment to the outcome is the purpose of the life that is being experienced – whatever form that life has taken and living your dharma is where grace abounds".
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna reminds, or dare I say commands, Arjuna to pick up his bow and arrows and enter the fight. Arjuna was experiencing his human existence as a warrior – a skilled archer – and Krishna reminded Arjuna to “consider your dharma and not vacillate”(1). I would submit for your consideration that Jesus was teaching on dharma when he said if you want to follow me you must pick up your cross. He was saying that whatever persona you have identified with must be forgotten and the way to Christ Consciousness is found by stepping into your dharma. Just like Arjuna and the disciples we balk…we look at the task our dharma is unfolding before us and we resist…we become entangled with the senses and the objects of our senses and we become “faint of heart". We retreat to the world that has been created by our persona’s where life is more or less compartmentalized and we know where all the doors are that give us entry into the rooms we have decorated and we say “No” that way is too hard…I cannot “see” how that way will work out…I am afraid. So we tremble and faint and retreat and never enter the realm of dharma…we continue with the struggles of the persona’s we are identified with because somehow they carry an illusion of “safety”…but…
Dharma is the container that holds grace…grace is the energy of our dharma that supports and holds us – not the approval or assistance from others and not the fortresses our persona’s have built...this was something that Chickweed understood far better than me...
As I said before, she would simply follow the rhythms of the seasons…bring her medicine, live her medicine and retreat with her medicine never fretting over the outside influences that intersected her journey. The magic that was created through our bond each spring was like a fuse, a spark that simply ignited another flame in the great Web of Life. My dharma as a medicine maker was fortified and enriched because of my experience with chickweed but the grace of my dharma would support me and hold me and give me the ability to be effective even though my path would not intersect with chickweed that spring and that same grace would be the conduit that connected me to the Medicine of Chickweed...always being able to call on it whether physically in her presence or not. There is but One Grace...grace is sufficient, grace is limitless, grace is what connects our dharma's...we embroider the colors of our dharma onto the fabric of Grace...Peace and Namaste
(1) Taken from Eknath Easwarans’ translation of The Bhagavad Gita, c2v31