Sticky Karma and Knotted Roots
September 2024
The constant hammering of my little trowel into the sun hardened grass left my knuckes red and sore. My hands and arms were weak from the digging and sawing and hacking and pulling of digging out this not-that-old wisteria bush in my backyard. It’s been months now that I’ve watched little sprouts of it pop up throughout the lawn, further and further away from the plant itself. Silently, invading every corner of the property in a way that felt so gentle and innocent, convinced it’s inevitable that one day this whole thing might be dressed in its oddly folded little purple flowers. As if it were personal, I dug until my hands gave out, which luckily lasted me long enough to reveal the massive cluster of roots that had formed over these last 6 years or so.
Tomorrow came and Adam set out to take what was left of the bush and pry it from the earth. I sat outside on our slanted concrete patio and watched him work away, sipping my milky coffee. This whole summer I’ve been unknowingly untanging my own roots in a process I can only understand as divinely guided. I’m following breadcrumbs of my heart that most days feel like turning away from the thing I built my life on- I no longer wanted to pray, and ceased to feel a purpose in asking the divine to make me whole. It seems that in growing up enough to fully love myself, I’ve ceased to have a place for God in my life, it seems I don’t need him anymore. At times I don’t know who I am if I an not raging against my own sense of brokenness. What do I do, now that I am not so consumed?
I’m trying to learn to love for love’s sake.
Adam hurled the mass of roots onto the ground and I looked at that knot which somehow became the manifestation of my own knottings. Just that morning my hands were covered in black sesame seeds, offerings for an ancestor I never knew. The seeds stuck to my fingers and I laughed at it, “these must be some sticky karmas”, rubbing my fingers over the jar I use to collect the various things I offer so I can walk them down to the river.
Isn’t it such that the stickiest karmas are the one’s we can’t even see? They’re so baked into who we are that it feels not even a choice for it to be this way. But in digging up these roots I wonder, is it ever really too late to free ourselves from knots? I think of the hymn I pray at night, “untie the knot, remove the pin, I am one with God.”
There are things that can be remedied with tantric ritual, and there are also things that can only be healed in the human heart. In Adam’s removing of the roots, I recognized that this person I’ve become wasn’t possible without him, and all the other people I’ve surrounded myself with. We don’t do anything alone really. For as singular as it can feel facing up to our stuff, life itself is a drama of the soul to find it’s own reflection. I’m afraid I am unlovable, and it is in the pulling up of the roots that I realize I am already loved.
The material realm and the way it makes these inner experiences so literal and tangible is taking my breath away. It is bringing me back to my writing and I’m starting to take seriously the impulse and the urge to participate, to create, to express something about the world because it would be a missed opportunity not to. I’ve lived a lot of my life waiting for the good part to come- this moment feels as good as any to welcome the possibility that here it is.
We planted 7 hydrangeas where the wisteria had sewn it’s extensive root system. I wish you could see them. My yard is still a messy plot of insistent tomatoes, long grass and bushy roses, but something feels different. What we unearthed, I’m not quite sure, and these days I think less of the importance of figuring it all out. But I have witnessed the ability to grow something new, to not just expand but multiply, and that if we’re willing to get out hands dirty then there’s really nothing that can’t be changed.
I think of my ancestors and wonder if they had been carrying out these rituals in the sewing of their own gardens, the singing of their songs, the sharing of their food. For what we worked in the dirt was ordinary magic borne from love and what can only happen between people. The love feels different without the knots. These days I’m feeling more sure of what’s mine and what’s not, and how there’s always the possibility in a relationship, a garden, a life, for new things to be planted. We are not bound even by the fiercest of roots.
There’s a little creek near my house where I often take Mango. We’ve started to train her to run free in the water when we’re lucky enough to be alone of the trail. As she waded into the humming stream I lowered my jar into the waves as all the individual seeds and grains ballooned into the moving water. In the end the letting go is easy, accepted with arms open wide. The cold water trickles down my arms and I swear it is the most intimate moment of my life. I have been seen, loved, held up. What other reason could there be to pray, than to fall to my knees at the force that has given me this day and all it’s simple majesty. She has made me a lush for the wine of grace.