the true advances of my life could not be brought about by force but occur silently, and that I prepare for them while working quietly and with concentration on the things that on a deep level I recognise to be my tasks*
(Rainer Maria Rilke)

vernation/vəːˈneɪʃ(ə)n/nounBOTANY

1. the arrangement of bud scales or young leaves in a leaf bud before it opens.

Here is the point Ursula Franklin makes and I mentioned a few days ago: Growth is not made but occurs.

We must each attend to those things we believe our lives to be about and the growth we do not know the limits of will take place.

What if, to use a word Robert Macfarlane introduced me to today, we are in a state of vernation, still to unfurl into the possibility of who we can be and what we can bring?

We must remind ourselves to be about those things today we know are our deeper tasks.

(*From Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters on Life.)