This month, during a Visio Divina practice, I was drawn to an image of a small plant pushing its way up through a crack in the concrete—life insisting on itself in an inhospitable place. The image stopped me. It brought me straight to one of my favorite teachings from Thích Nhất Hạnh: No mud, no lotus. Growth does not happen in spite of hardship; it happens because of it.
Visio Divina—spiritual seeing—is an ancient practice that invites us to let images become doorways. We linger with what we see long enough for it to speak: offering comfort, challenge, or a memory that has been waiting to surface. In that still attention, wisdom rises—not from effort, but from presence.
The image of the plant in the concrete reflects many moments in my life when resilience didn’t look triumphant or strong. It looked quiet. Persistent. Uncelebrated. For me, resilience has often meant refusing to abandon myself when the ground was hard and the path unclear—choosing to stay, even when staying asked everything.
The second image I chose was one of meditation and nature—of grounding through breath, body, and stillness. This image represents how resilience lives in me now. Not as pushing through, but as returning. Returning to the body. Returning to breath. Returning to what is real.
Yoga, meditation, and time in nature are not escapes for me. They are acts of remembering. They remind my nervous system that it is safe enough to soften. They bring me back to what matters.
When I hold these two images together, I see an evolution. Earlier in my life, resilience meant surviving—growing through the crack in the cement, holding steady when life was sharp and unforgiving. Now, resilience means tending—creating conditions where I no longer have to fight so hard to stay whole.
The image that speaks most clearly to my life today is the flower. Not because I am struggling, but because I am honoring where I have come from. My resilience did not arrive neatly. It grew in places that demanded everything of me.
And it still blooms.
Quietly.
Faithfully.
Which brings me to the words of Leonard Cohen, who reminds us:
“Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.”
Resilience, I am learning, is not about fixing the cracks or pretending they aren’t there. It is about trusting that the light knows exactly where to enter—and letting it.
