This confused little iris is in my front yard. It was supposed to bloom in the spring or summer, but here it is in mid-November. I suspect it wanted to bloom in the summer, but it couldn’t for lack of moisture. So now, after a good soaking, it’s in bloom.
Even in nature, sometimes things happen out of season. We can fish for reasons (maybe it was the drought?) or we can accept that not everything happens when it is “supposed to.” One way to see this iris is to take it as a challenge to the whole idea of “supposed to.” Why shouldn’t it bloom now? Am I enjoying it any less? If it had bloomed in summer, I wouldn’t have appreciated it nearly as much.
Things happen “out of season” in our lives, too. Sometimes it’s easy to see those things as special, indeed miraculous.I once helped a woman in her 80’s learn the Haftarah blessings for her adult Bat Mitzvah service. When she chanted those blessing and her Haftarah, everyone in the synagogue marveled.
But what about the boy who decides he isn’t ready for a Bar Mitzvah just yet? It is also a miraculous thing for him to have the insight that he’s not ready – maybe next year, maybe when he’s 16. It takes courage to step off the conveyor belt, to say, “Not just yet” when all your friends are in the flow. I had a student who had done exactly that: he refused to have his service at 13, waiting until he was 16. He chose to take Intro to Judaism and to work with a tutor for his preparation, and then he stood before his congregation and proudly led the service. His insight and courage were no less miraculous than the great-grandmother I had coached a few years earlier.
Sometimes we realize that there’s a bit of teshuvah we didn’t do during the High Holy Days, Our minds and egos can be very tricky, making us “forget” something important until Yom Kippur is past. Despite all the liturgical talk about the “gates” being “closed,” it’s never a bad time to make teshuvah. So what if Chanukah is almost here? Like the iris, your act of teshuvah will have the beauty of its own time.
I went to rabbinical school with many young people who were going at the “right time” in their late twenties and early thirties. A few of us were late bloomers. While we couldn’t offer Am Yisrael (the Jewish People) as many years of potential service as our younger counterparts, we brought other gifts: congregational experience, management experience, parenting experience, experience. We bloomed out of season, but for all that, we had much to offer.
Have you ever bloomed out of season? What was that experience like for you? Is there a bloom within you that needs to come out? I invite you to share all this in the comments section!
