The Art of Patience

Patience: A Study, 2020 

Watercolor pencil on paper

 I enjoy gardening and, while I am still a bit of a novice, I am learning. One thing I have realized in my gardening adventures is that I am able to grow certain plants very well. Some plants like me and some plants do not. Oddly enough, avocados are one of the plants that I seem to get along with really well. 

It all started off with one lone avocado seed as a sort of experiment. I had never tried to grow an avocado plant before but I figured why not? I always throw the pits out anyways, what do I have to lose? And what do you know, it worked! It worked so well, in fact, that I now have a little avocado forest happening in my hallway. Okay, it’s actually more like four little plants… but someday it will be a forest. With every salad my army grows! :)

One of the things I like about these funky plants is that they don’t require very much maintenance. They do, however, require a lot of patience! It is quite common for avocado seeds to show zero exterior signs of growth for a long time. My first seed didn’t do anything for over a month. Then one day it cracked. This progression wasn’t exactly reassuring. The crack just prompted a lot of questions like; is that supposed to happen? Did I do something wrong? Is my seed a dud? Should I start over? Fortunately, I decided to stick with it and wait just a little longer (ok a lot longer). To my delight it was not a dud! A tiny little root eventually emerged and boy, did I celebrate that tiny root. All that waiting and anticipation just made it that much more exciting. From then on I was hooked.

It has taken a lot of time to get my little avocado babies this far and it will take another five years or so before I may potentially see any fruit. As a tribute to patience (and to my future avocado grove) I decided to immortalize one of my avocado plants in the form of a drawing. I chose to render this little guy in watercolor pencil to capture the vivid chroma of the leaves and the delicate contours of their veins.

I thought about the journey of my avocado seeds as I layered and painted this piece together. I couldn’t help but ponder the parallels of metaphorical “seeds” - seeds of love, seeds of hope, and even seeds of faith. We have the ability to cast these seeds out during our day and sow them into the hearts of others. Jesus talked about these figurative seeds in his parables, most notably in The Parable of the Sower. 

Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. (Matthew 13:3-8).

My friend Sylvia once shared the observation that “seeds take time to germinate.” This was one of those simple but profound statements that blew my mind! Like real seeds, metaphorical seeds don’t sprout the instant they are planted… they take time! Even if the growing conditions are perfect, even if the soil is good, even if you have done everything correctly, it still takes time. Part of the reason for this is that the visible evidence of growth takes time to surface. Just like my avocado, things might be happening on the inside but they are hidden from our sight. I think that’s why people start avocados in water - not because avocados are aquatic but because all that waiting and not seeing any progress would drive you nuts! People, however, are not avocado seeds and hearts do not come with a handy-dandy viewing jar. We just have to sow, and trust, and remember that: even if you don’t see immediate results that doesn’t mean your seed isn’t sprouting. It might just need time and a little patience.