Meandering Around the Grange Way of Life
by Walter Boomsma
Growth might be painful
Let’s depart–somewhat–from our review of the First Degree to think about the following quote.
“Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger than we were before.
Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant. Often the feeling is anything but pleasant.
Alice Walker in Living by the Word: Essays
But what is most unpleasant is not knowing what is happening. Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be… for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed.”
I wonder if Alice was a Granger at one time because she’s adopted nature as symbolic of important things we can learn from it! I’ve written before that you can’t become a butterfly unless you’re willing to stop being a caterpillar. But it’s also true that you can’t become a flower or plant unless you’re willing to stop being a seed.
The idea of the weight of the earth and the hard shell surrounding us is very real, isn’t it? Something has to happen in order for us to break that shell and push through the weight on top of us. Sometimes it’s the pain itself! “I’m tired of living inside this shell down here beneath the earth in the darkness. I want to break out and push through to live in the sunshine.”
You can’t become a chicken unless you’re willing to stop being an egg. It may be hard work but you have to break the shell you’re in.
While there is still much uncertainty, there seems to be general agreement that we are “coming out” of the darkness created by COVID. Nature can encourage us to think of it as having been a seed or an egg. There are some cracks developing in the shell surrounding us as individuals and as Granges. It would be too easy to recoil from the light that enters through that crack. We’ve become accustomed to the darkness.
It may be comforting to talk about returning to normal but it may also be limiting. We may in fact be “in the process of change, of actually becoming larger than we were before.” I challenge you as an individual and in turn as a Grange to look to the lessons of nature. But remember this important point: unlike nature, we aren’t genetically predisposed to becoming a chicken or a flower or a plant. We have the amazing ability to become–to create–who and what we become.
It’s time to start pushing against that shell. Strive for the sunshine and be the person and the Grange you want to be.
Any degree or ritual quotations are from the forty-sixth edition of the 2013 Subordinate Grange Manual or the most recent edition of the Pomona Grange Manual. The views and opinions expressed in “Exploring Traditions” are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official doctrine and policy of the Grange. Information about the book “Exploring Traditions—Celebrating the Grange Way of Life” can be found at http://abbotvillagepress.com, on Mr. Boomsma’s Amazon Author Page, or by contacting the author.