 Hi everyone! Today's story is the Everything Seed, a story of beginnings. I hope you enjoy the artwork as much as the story. Have you ever watched a seed grow? Have you ever noticed how it begins so small, so still, so quiet, like a gift wanting to be opened and how slowly it wakes up? It begins to unfold, growing into something larger and larger and larger. Then you know that whatever comes from a seed usually ends up looking very little like the seed it came from, which is also true of the very first seed. Once long, long ago, way back before the beginning, so long ago there was no such thing as time because there was no one there, no one there to count it. Everywhere was a huge, deep, mysterious place, like something waiting to happen. There were no stars, no sun, no moon. There was no place like Earth, not a drop of water or a single tree or a rock or a flower and no living beings anywhere. But in that deep, waiting space was hidden the tiniest point of something no bigger than a seed. It was not a flower seed. It was not an elm tree seed. It was not a seed of corn, although all of those things were included in the seed, we call it, and everything's seed because that is what it became. No one knows where that first seed came from or how it was planted or how it knew in the way that only seeds seem to know. How long to wait for just the right moment to sprout and grow. But all at once this tiny seed cradled and nourished in the rich soil of space woke up, broke open, and began to unfold, unfolding, unfolding in blossoming forests into an enormous blazing ball of bright light, like a great grandmother's sun, and the universe was born. Hope fluttered the galaxies like a storm of snowflakes swirling and gathering into the brightest, most blindingly beautiful cloud of star, and out of those star clouds world our own star, the one we call the sun and our earth and the moon. And all the round spinning planets we have learned how to name. And this is the secret of that tiny seed. You and I were there in the very beginning, just as the idea for each leaf on a big oak tree lies hidden inside an acorn. We were there with all the stars and planets, all the rocks and oceans, plants and animals and people. Everything that is now, ever was, or ever will be, was inside that first tiny seed. So whenever you hold a seed in your hand and wonder what it could become, imagine how you and all that is here once came from the tiniest speck of an everything seed before it sprouted and grew long, long ago in the way back beginning of time. Now if this were an ordinary story, it would end right there. But this story of the universe keeps unfolding. What once began in a blazing blossom of light continues every day. New stars sprout open in the deepest soil of space, new plants and animals appear on the earth, seeds of many kinds are scattered all over the earth to help us remember. And new people are born every day with the spark of that first light still alive and burning deep inside waiting like the everything seed to shine in ways that are yet to be known.