Friday, January 7, 2004
In a very true story, it was in the mud and slime of a peat bog, ina Kemigawa farmyard twenty-five miles southeast of Tokyo, that a team of workmen found what they were not looking for... alive...
The workmen had been digging in a peat deposit not far from Tokyo. They had found something important. That's how a team of archaelogists heard it; that's why they rushed to the scene.
"How far down?" a workman was asked.
Eighteen feet.
The fossilized remains of a canoe, and something else. One of the archaelogists climbed into the pit, reached down, parted the soil with his hands. Then, crying out, he drew back.
Others converged.
Breathless moments passed. It was agreed that only one scientist in all of Japan would be qualified to carry on from here. Dr. Ichiro Ohga.
Dr. Ohga was notified, was rushed from Tokyo to the excavation site.
As he peered down into the bog, as his eyes fell on its secret, his pulse quickened.
"My God, is it dormant? Or is it possibly... alive?"
The scientists were not afraid for themselves. All their lives they had trained and preconditioned themselves for surprise. But they knew that this find must somehow be removed promptly to some safe place - lest it should come to life.
They had heard of the giant reptiles discovered in peat bogs, the mastodons trapped in sheets of ice with skin, organs, everything, preserved. But never before was there this degree of hope that something might be discovered from thousands of years past, still living!
We do not know the details of their find was removed to the safety of a laboratory.
We know that it got there. We know that Dr. Ohga kept a round-the-clock vigil, and we know that in four days, under laboratory-created climatic conditions, perceptible movement!
Cameramen were summoned to record this unprecedented resurrection. Japan's scientific community was alerted to the surprise that there was life left over from the time when Roman legions first invaded England. A living thing had survived from prehistoric Japan. The chain of unbroken links which comprised Oriental psychology, sociology, philosophy and theosophy had led a living thing from the lifeless past to join them in the present.
For the discovery in the peat deposit, eighteen feet below the earth, cradled in the fossilized remains of a canoe - a two-thousand-year-old ungerminated, dormant, apparently lifeless... seed.
And after four days, a sprout; after fourteen months, a delicate, pink lotus flower.
The seed that went to sleep when Jesus did... was awake!
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It has always remained my belief that all that we each need to survive and thrive in this world is within our grasp... resting within ourselves. And for all the times, we all hear persons say, "I can't do it. I don't have the ability or resolve to do it," the seeds for self-discovery and growth lie there inside - dormant, but not dead.
Nature reminds us all to0 graphically, through fossilized remains, of the outcome of lifeforms that could not learn or chose not to adapt. It is an age-old story: some of us are already in the grave before our heart even stops beating.
You and I are that vessel, that canoe, sailing through our own life journey. Before it's too late and we find ourselves trapped ashore and fossilized, we need to sprout all of our seeds of opportunity, ability and gifts. Those opportunities, abilities and gifts are our spiritual treasure to be spent wisely long before we reach our final resting place.
Begin today to fully germinate and nurture your seeds of opportunity, ability and gifts. So that when your earthly canoe is someday unearthed, let it be said by those in our distant future, "There only remains a skeletal frame. This was a life well lived."