“The season has begun to pry at winter buds, loosening their tight knots, patiently untangling them into blossoms.” Mary Jo Hoffman
Sometimes our hearts are like buds, tight tiny knots. We hang onto those knots as hedges against uncertainty, ambiguity, fear, and loss.
The spring-flowering trees have been flamboyant this year, full of blossom and scent. But their beauty has been short-lived, nipped by freezing temperatures and stifling heat.
These swings between searing heat and numbing cold have been hell on blossoms. The forecast for the next 10-days is for more stable temperatures without the wild swings of seasonal disorientation. Now the late flowering crabs are coming into their moment. Will the moment last?
So much of life is about timing. Spring’s texture is more challenging for me to grasp than winter, summer, or fall. It’s both more ephemeral and less predictable. Its many texture changes from shivering cold to searing heat make me wonder whether spring is now endangered, a vanishing season.
Spring in my life has been the season of longing and restlessness. The time when all of nature sings of passion and I join in. There’s a feral-ness to spring I embrace. I want to play hooky, shedding adult responsibilities, the dependable productivity of my days.
Perhaps that’s springs purpose, to renew a spirit of exploration and adventure. Two friends write that they are playing with the spring muse. One is considering taking an art class, the other getting back in the saddle. One worries she may be a “bit late.” The other thrills that muscle memory lets her enjoy her time atop a horse. Age, she reports, is a “non-issue.”
Here’s the glory of this moment, whatever your age, flower where you are with the ideas ripening in your life. May your heart unfurl, untangle and release whatever is holding the budding potential.
May you blossom.
Click here to download EarthWhispers Abbey Shalom Spirituality Retreat homework and resources for week 1.
A new year is dawning. What will you make of it? What will it make of you?
I invite you to sit here for a moment. Take in the tide ebbing and flowing. Take in your own ebb and flow.
I leave you with this blessing from my EarthWhispers sister, Sue Schuerman:
Like birds sing the day into being, may you, too, break into song at the mere appearance of dawn.
When life is going well, I’m the kid with the ice cream cone, licking it all up, wanting more.
When life goes badly, I want to hurry along, believing, hoping, the future holds better days. Good or bad, I’m in a hurry, hungry for more, focusing on the future.
This year unhinged my usual tactics for dealing with life. Why hurry? I’m fine, right where I am. The future too uncertain to long for it’s coming. Each day holds enough joy and sorrow. In this slowed down enoughness, we face things as they are and recognize the impermanence of life, love, happiness. It is, it is not, it is.
As we wrap Christmas presents, I want to wrap us in bubble wrap protecting us against our fragility and hubris.
And yet I know life demands everything we’ve got and a bit more. Our happiness bubbles pop.
We step into a future and faith–less magical, smaller, and more real. It’s the size of the room we’re in right now. We’re going to need less faith and more practice. The practice of extending generosity to meet scarcity and sorrow, comfort to salve fear, meeting uncertainty with our witness and presence.
In this dark winter, may we light a candle of hope. In our sorrow may we open to our tenderness. May we face uncertainty with courage.
xo
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