“Not everything is meant to be saved. Some things are meant to be sacredly composted—so their wisdom can nourish what comes next, without forcing their form to live on.” Anonymous

May I define composting verses salvaging something? Compositing is when something has served its purpose and is ready to return to the earth. You let it break down, transform, and become fertile soil that can grow new life. For example, an apple core hasn’t much use, but as compost it can transform into rich fertilizer.

On the other hand, salvaging is when you take something that still has life in it and give it a new purpose. For example, maybe you have a glass that once held sauce. Now you clean it out and store buttons in it. It is still here, still useful, but used differently.

I sit in the silence and think of the many projects, experiences, and relationships I have been a part of. Some of them I have created myself. Some are collaborations with others. There is a flow to life that moves us from experience to experience. People come in and out of our life for many reasons and in many ways. I remember this quote, but I’m not sure who said it. Some connections are for a moment. Some for a season. A rare few are for a lifetime. The wisdom is knowing which is which—and releasing with grace, not guilt, when the soil is ready for something new.

I have been guilty of holding on too long. How about you? Why is so hard to let go? I think it might be because there is an attachment to the idea of failure in the ending of something. We justify staying by convincing ourselves that maybe if we’d just spent a little more time, or had done a little more, or given a little more, it would have turned out all right.

It all comes back to the self and our response to what the Universe places before us. Life is our journey, and we have called others to journey with us, and they have called us. Have you ever walked a labyrinth. I saw this principle mirrored there. I remember walking with a medium sized group of people. Sometimes, we would walk toward each other. Sometimes side-by-side and then suddenly walk in different directions. The idea of relationships ending and beginning became clear to me in that moment. Beginnings and endings are the journey of life.

Right now, I am in a pivotal moment in my life. Something is shifting and changing. I am reminded that not everything has to be saved, but it can be composted. It can be tucked away to turn into something rich and completely new and nurturing. If I keep trying to push it back into its own mold, saving it from what I think is demise, I will lose it anyway. Instead, I just put it into God’s soil, called the Creative Medium and let it be transformed there.

I am thinking of the book I recently published, Where is My Red Dress? The story I tell was tucked away for a lifetime—composting and, yes, being nurtured by me as I evolved and changed, sought healing, and, finally, blossomed into a book to assist others. It is rich. It is truth—my truth! God’s compost never wastes anything.

As I think of God’s compost, I first must define God.  God is not a man on a cloud. God is the energy, the force behind everything. God is constantly expressing through and as everything. God is the Quantum, the Life Force, the Source. As the Source expresses, it gives and is received in some way. It is our Mirror. It can only create our reflection. We reflect back to God what it is we want by showing it what we are. It’s all vibration. The mirror won’t change unless we do.

The thing about energy is it is never wasted. When our reflection changes, the energy changes. The energy returns to itself and then takes another form, just like the compost, it becomes fertilizer for the next creation.

In the observer effect, we know that everything is particle and wave. Until we observe the particles and waves they remain particle and waves. As we witness them, they concretize. Even that which seems solid is an illusion.

Right now, in my own life, I am looking at its financial structure. I am understanding that I must put some old ideas I have back into the soil to be composted into something new. I must also, look at what I have used my compost for to see if it is a form that serves me as I grow. Do I want to grow a potato or a tomato. I get to decide what to do with the compost. I get to use it in any way I want, but it is never wasted. It’s meant for growth, change and constant renewal.

So is there a delay? Is there time between the compost of an old idea and the birth of a new one? Must the new lay dormant for a while until it is nurtured and nourished into the new? We can’t rush the seeds we plant into the Creative Medium. What we can do is hold our vision for the new and stay alert for the changes that come about, the answers from the universe in the form of gentle and not so gentle surprises.

God’s compost is not where life is discarded—it’s where life is reborn. Every disappointment, every failure, every loss can be laid gently into the Divine soil. In time, Spirit will transform it into new beauty, new strength, and new beginnings.

Where in your life are you trying to salvage something that might need to composted? Can you trust the process? Do you have enough faith in the Creative Medium, the Law, to bring forth the manifestation of the new in the perfect time?

I believe it takes faith, not in the conditional world, but in what is unseen, what is happening beneath the soil. I have a mantra that states “My life is unfolding perfectly, no matter what.” This is not denial. It is the knowing that sometimes we cannot step back far enough to see the whole picture until later. As Steve Jobs once said, and I’m paraphrasing. Our lives can only be understood by connecting the dots backward.

There is a mystery to life. We stand within the field of God’s Compost and must trust that nothing is ever wasted and all will be useful and new. However, we must dig up that new and look at it anew to see the miracle. I’m in that field right now.

 Rev. Dr. Rita, Author, Founding Spiritual Director CSL Kaua’i, Founder of the Red Dress Movement