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Sunday, April 3, 2011

THE SPRING!

     Every year, I am surprised and impressed by the spring, that everything so seemingly dead and brown should suddenly burst forth with seed pods and bright color and flowers and fresh scents. Even if the weather doesn't cooperate. Even if it snows in April. The longer lingering light encourages rebirth all over the natural world. Things bloom in spite of my mood, in spite of political struggles, injury, human chaos and lack of hope.
     I believe that through observing nature we are meant to learn about cycles of life and death, and understand that the same is true of our own natures. Everyday, in small ways, and large ways, little bits of us die and bloom. We drop old behaviors and irrational judgments like fall leaves and bloom possibility and willingness to change. Ideas lie fallow within us and then wriggle and grow like seeds when the sun of someone's belief in us shines upon them, when we give and receive love. We have moments and seasons of rest and explosive beauty. We flop like full grown summer leaves. We cry tears like raindrops.
     The spring is a time of newness and change. It is opportunity and regeneration. Living things start to stretch and reach, ready for growth. The Oak gets more solid and anchors deeper still. Bushes fan out and flash their colors. Grass goes crazy and needs to be kept in trim. Lessons for us, all of it. We are like the Oak, like the bushes, like the grass. We grow solid. We flash and sway. We need trimming and fertilizer, sunshine and rain. We die and are reborn no less than the plants and trees. Their hope is ours. We burst forth together as the days get longer and the spring comes.

I bloom where I am planted. The spring is in me no less than the earth.