Learning from Moss

I was walking my favorite greenway in Greensboro on a gray winter’s morning when I sharply came into focus on something–not new, but newly apparent to my eyes. All along the wooded path, moss was growing: deeply green and vibrant, stark against the dull hues of the season. It was a bright signal of some alternative aspect I hadn't yet considered. Some new thought to introduce to my wondering about winter and its slow progress and the (perhaps grace-filled?) boundaries of Time. I resolved to submit a query to the internet god: Google

“How does moss survive the winter?” Here is some of what I have discovered about moss: 

It doesn’t have roots; rather, something called rhizoids. They are shallow and hairlike and can draw up nutrients from the soil but are not the plant’s only way of being fed. Their main function is apparently to anchor the plant, but they are easily pulled away. Stable, yet moveable. 

Moss is resilient. When it’s cold, it produces its own anti-freeze and pauses some processes to wait out winter. Also, if it gets too dry, it goes dormant–hibernating, if you will. Just a little bit of water can rehydrate and reanimate brown, dried up moss. It can survive far more extreme temperatures than most other plants. It is hardy and adaptable.

Moss thrives on the water it can glean from its environment. It is very slow growing–its speed ebbing and flowing with the availability of water. It’s okay with waiting, and this is perhaps the primary aspect that draws my mind towards it with wonder.

I arrived at my most recent counseling session feeling very unsettled, unmoored, at a loss about what I was thinking, feeling, and experiencing. During a brainspotting session, I saw a vision of myself in the midst of a vast sandy beach, no edges in sight, standing on a small boulder that rose above the expanse. As I contemplated that, I got a sense that I had been trying to find stability in any number of things in my life–friendships and relationships and plans and health etc.--but those things hadn’t been strong or reliable enough to bear me up. The rock was meant to signify a foundation that never moves or sinks: my connection to the Divine, I gathered. As I lingered in that mental place, I later saw myself somehow fused with the rock so that I could move freely across the beach, experiencing different parts of that landscape but always safe and stable. It was a helpful image, and a reminder that if I place my entire weight on any changeable person or thing, I am going to eventually get pulled under. I must figure out something to put my weight on that can bear it–a human quest, I feel. One we are all seeking in our own ways. 

This practice and its vision were helpful, but I rather prefer the metaphor of the moss. I like the idea of having permission to be rooted where I am, but not permanently so or in a way that is wholly dependent. Because the things to which I attach myself here are not bad, dangerous, or wrong to rely on. They can be a source of nourishment, as long as they are not the only source. Like moss, in seasons, I will be fed more than others, but perhaps the right nourishment can go a long way, allowing me to withstand lack or extremity. 

It does feel like a danger of existing in this world (and trying to figure out how to thrive here) is airing too much on one of those sides of the coin: being as rooted as possible in a good life that we design or discover, or unattaching from all things so that we may be protected from the changing of the resources available to us. The former is not as reliable as we think, but if we adopt the latter, we miss out on absorbing the richness and beauty that we have Divine, joyful encouragement to attach to. 

I want to be moss-like. It doesn’t grow tall, but it beautifully functions within the element of time that we’re all bound by. It may dry out. It may grow at a barely perceptible rate (so slow it seems to stop at times), but it’s persistent and resilient. It’s good at waiting. It’s good at existing where it is. Drawing up goodness, weathering the passage of time and what it brings, living on. 

What would it mean to stop fighting against time? Instead of jittering nervously at the gate like a racehorse about to burst through, what if I accepted the movement of time as it is right now, where it is right now, and assumed that it had something to give me rather than believing that all the gifts I have to receive are beyond this moment? 

What does this moment in time have to give me? Where is the beauty and substance I can draw upward to nourish me? What can I hold and process within that I’ve already received, as I wait to receive more? In the spirit of “the journey is the destination”: how am I meant to grow, not as I wait for something to happen, but as I acknowledge what is happening right now? Maybe someday (even someday soon!) I’ll feel movement in my life. Maybe the pace of life will pick up and I’ll experience that rocketing forward of dreams into reality. But my growth as a person, my gathering of experience and knowledge and value, isn’t actually dependent on that happening. It’s happening now. I can attach myself to this moment and absorb. I can also choose to ignore it (because I’m not a plant), but it’s going to happen either way. I think that if I pay attention, I may find that this moment is deeply nourishing and enriching and that this pace is a profound gift. Where growth happens. Where life happens, in fact. Where I am becoming, with every second. And if I rush on to the next thing, I will not be what I could have been.