Do you remember Monday? This past Monday, I mean. It was such a nearly perfect day that I am still trying to conjure its presence. Waking early, I walked through our neighborhood allowing the morning creatures,those who also rise early, to serenade me. Birds whose songs I enjoy but cannot name created a soundtrack for my morning walk. Everywhere I looked color was bursting forth into the world. Dew lingered on hosta leaves looking like tiny lakes for fairies that must live just beneath these enormous, green umbrellas. People and their dogs were out…..animals with noses in the air experiencing something my human abilities could not fathom. Runners moved along morning routes taking it all in or, sadly, plugged into something that was keeping them from the morning concert. At least one young child, still in pajamas with bed-head hair hopped around outside, the memory of last night’s fun still present in his summer mind.

My drive on Monday took me along my leisurely path, the one I use when the day requires more meditation than speed. Most other people refer to it as the East River Road. Monday it was flooded with bikers. Coexisting with them as I was required to do made me think of the skill needed to drive in Amsterdam where bikers zip and fly, ruling the road over cars and walkers. It took all my energy to be present to them as my eyes were drawn to the day’s beauty unfolding, offering itself to me. Pay attention! Lives are at stake!

Making my final turn before merging onto the frontage road that would take me onto the short distance of freeway left before arriving at the office, I saw the one person who had truly dressed for the day in an appropriate manner. In the crosswalk as I waited for the light to turn, a tall, stately Somali woman sauntered leisurely across the street. Her long, flowing dress was of a deep, rich green with swirling, colorful paisley patterns just at the hem and moving up one side. Over her head was a long, kelly green cloth outlined with green sequins. My face opened up in an enormous smile. She looked like the Queen of this perfect morning. I looked down at my drab, understated clothes. This woman had dressed for the day. I wore a uniform.

All these experiences reminded me of something I had heard while listening to the radio on Sunday morning. I heard a person being interviewed say “There are things you don’t see when you are sleepwalking through your daily life.” It is true, isn’t it? Most of the time I am a sleepwalker. Are you? Quite often I can move through whole swathes of a day and not remember having been in those minutes, hours, experiences. 

And then there are days that will not allow this kind of behavior. Days that seem to work overtime to get our attention. Monday was one of them. I remember thinking that it was a shame I couldn’t simply give myself to that day, that I couldn’t just continue the work of noticing and never make my way into the office. I was fairly certain the young child in its pajamas I had seen earlier would do the work of noticing all day which is, after all, the work of children. I was also sure that the dogs would spend the day following their noses, breathing in the full, rich odors of an early summer day. And the woman in green? Her clothes would allow her to be a part of the celebration moving through the masterpiece the Earth was creating with each passing moment. There was a sadness of responsibility and loss that washed over me that I could not join their company.

Perhaps it is not possible to live a whole day doing the work of noticing. But it is possible to at least give attention to some moments or parts of the day, to wake up from our sleepwalking with an attention to the things we do not want to miss in these precious, fleeting days of summer. Can you do it? Can you choose a few moments to notice? It is risky business. This act of noticing might send you outside in your pajamas……or with your nose held high in the air breathing in the goodness. Or better yet, it might even find you dressing up to walk regally through Creation claiming your place as Queen or King of the day. 

Perhaps it is a good day for each of us to wipe the sleep from our eyes and begin noticing.

As humans, one of our great desires is to know that our living has made a difference, that somehow others will notice that we are here….have been here. This takes many forms. Some are heroic and prophetic. Others are gentle and understated. The chronicle of this happens as we consider our legacy or even write a resume. “Here are the ways I have shown up in the world.”, we say with each black slash on the white page, with each word that is spoken. As we live out our days which is after all the living of our lives, we cut away at the stone that will remind those who come after that we were here, that our lives mattered. It is actually a Beyoncé song that seems to speak to this……I wanna leave my footprints on the sands of time…..Know there was something that, meant something that I left behind……When I leave this world, I’ll leave no regrets……Leave something to remember, so they won’t forget…..I was here…..I lived, I loved……I was here.

It is something I was reminded of on a walk around Lake Como last week. Taking in the emerging spring on one of the few days without rain, my husband and I made our way around this sweet lake. People were out on the lake in paddleboats begging summer to arrive. Others walked dogs whose noses pointed heavenward as they took in all the fresh smells that had not long ago been buried beneath ice and snow. We observed ducks with young ones lined up behind the parent, learning how to maneuver the lake’s waters while on logs nearby turtles lined up to sun themselves. Honeysuckle sent sweet scents into the air and water irises bloomed on the banks. People were fishing and stood poised in hope. We followed a monarch…..yes!….from leaf to leaf as we tried to snap a photo of its early and longed for presence. It was a pure experience of pastoral beauty.

As we made a turn in the path and headed toward our car, I noticed a large stone. On the stone was a 21st century ‘cave’ drawing completed with gravel that had been found nearby. It was an image of a little girl created by placing stones into a form that delivered the sweet innocence of a child. I stopped in my tracks and took the time to notice it realizing that to notice the creation was also to honor the one who had created it. The image said….”I was here….I am alive….I was here.” 

It was not an expensive or fancy monument to a life but it was a monument none the less. I thought of all the times in the scriptures when stones were stacked to create an altar or at least a reminder that someone ‘was here’ and that the Holy had moved in that life. I also thought of the ways the Celts and other indigenous cultures stack stones to mark an important moment. All are ways for the human to say “I was here” and to remember that we are forever seen and known by the One who breathed us all into being. 

Many times we can feel invisible. Is anyone noticing that we are here? The greatest gift we can give another person is our presence to their living. It is what we all long for even when we cannot name it. How do you long to be noticed? How can you offer the gift of being present to another this day?

Each day we lay another stone that says we were here. May this day and every day be blessed with noticing. 

There is a certain order to most things. That is, until there isn’t. I got to experience this first hand last week while staying at a hotel while attending a conference. It is a hotel I stay in nearly every year so I have a certain order, a particular rhythm to my arrival, my waking and sleeping, my departure. However, this year many of the things I had come to expect and count on were upended. Upon arrival I was thrown into the renovation of the hotel lobby as it changes from one owner to another. Walking into the space that had always been sleek and orderly, I was confronted head on with boxes piled high, floors that were ripped up and in the process of being tiled, chairs and sofas wrapped in plastic and stacked like doll house furniture. It was immediately unnerving as a feeling of having walked into the set of a DIY show washed over me.

At first I wondered about the noise. What time did the workers arrive…..as a saw that cut tile blared in my ears? Is the health club open? No. Will there be breakfast? Yes, but in a different room….one you get to through the torn up hallway and up the ramp. But I was soon to learn that the noise would be the least of my concerns. Over hearing that a wedding was happening in just two days and the space had to be ready, I began to notice how the tilers were still working at 10:00 o’clock at night and may literally have worked throughout the night for all I knew. I winced as we traipsed across the tiles, newly laid, not yet grouted. “Aren’t they supposed to ‘rest’ awhile before people can walk on them?” Someplace this cautionary voice from some long ago home project rang out in my head.

Coming down in the early morning, and I do mean early, the workers were already there, painting, hanging wallpaper, tiling, grouting….all simultaneously. Standing in the wings, others waited and as soon as one of these tasks was nearly completed, they swooped in to hang drapes while the wallpaper was still being smoothed. (My mother would have been horrified.)A few feet away surrounded by boxes both empty and still full, another worker was wiring up the large screen television setting the channel to a pastoral landscape that seemed so incongruous to what was going on all around. Scrape, swoosh, slap, bang. The sounds of frantic remodeling and decorating continued. 

As I walked into the lobby and climbed over yellow ‘caution’ tape,I noticed one nook of the lobby had been filled with furniture and there were now books on the shelves. Only a few feet away workers knelt still laying flooring and others stood on scaffolding, painting and hanging wallpaper near the ceiling. “What if the paint drops”, I thought, “or the wallpaper comes crashing down on the unprotected new furniture?” 

Each trip through the lobby raised my anxiety level. Upstairs, hotel staff were working away preparing the room where the wedding reception would happen. White lights twinkled in the doorways and across the ceiling. Tablecloths were being spread on tables while the dance floor was being prepared. Downstairs was pandemonium and upstairs everything was slowly unfolding.

Since I have returned from this experience, I have thought back so many times about what it all triggered in me. I recognized that it was not the clutter or even the work that seemed impossible to complete in a timely way that got to me. It was that the process they were employing seemed so out of an order I understood. Floors, painting, wallpapering,then furniture, artwork, drapes. That’s an order I get. But who said it had to be that way?

My sense is that the couple who was married and had their reception at this hotel won’t have a clue as to what took place the days before they arrived in celebration. It won’t matter a lick that the drapes were hung before the floor was finished and that the television was set to go before the furniture was in place. In the end, it all worked out which is all that really matters. 

There is a certain order to things……until there isn’t.

A couple of weeks ago I was at a dinner where someone made the statement that  ‘the only constant is becoming’. I quickly wrote it down on a piece of paper and tucked it in my purse. But this concept….this truth….has been traveling with me ever since I heard it. While we often say the only constant is change, ‘becoming’ has a different feel to it, doesn’t it? Often we can push back against what we perceive as change, but becoming……now that is a different thing altogether. Becoming fits right up there with blossoming and evolving, with emerging and unfolding. These words carry such promise.

Right now there is so much to visibly notice that is becoming. I have kept my eye on the irises reaching their long, leggy stems toward the sky. Like green arrows they are shooting up from their winter home. At their green ends a hint of purple is in its own act of becoming…..becoming the dainty flower that will offer its fragile, fleeting beauty to the world. It is this human’s blessed work to be witness to its becoming.

The month of May is the time to attend graduation parties of those young ones whose lives we have watched unfold. Many we have known since birth and we have watched their movement from infant to toddler, from gangly children to petulant adolescent. And now their becoming has brought them most often to a place of confident young adulthood, ready to take the next steps along a journey that lives in the imagination. Each has chosen the next steps of becoming, choices that will surprise and challenge, choices that will confound and trouble. 

Becoming is the currency of living. It is also the legacy of creativity and what we were all called to by our very birth. It is the ground into which we were all planted. Like the irises that are reaching toward the sun in their becoming, we each reach for those elements that guide us toward what is pulling us toward blossom. Books we cherish. Friendships that companion us. Silence that connects with soul. Art that inspires. Landscapes that remind us of our origins. Relationships that fill us with love and humility. So many contributions to our becoming.

This past week I have been at the annual gathering of United Methodists around Minnesota. It is always a wonderful time to see friends and colleagues, some not seen but at this one time in spring. It is a time of worship,reports,connection, legislation, voting, speaking, listening, singing and laughter. There are also tears of grief as we remember those who have served churches and who have died in the past year. And there are tears of joy for those being ordained into ministry in the church. It is a few days when we can recognize, if we are aware, the becoming that has happened, is happening,to this institution and the lives of the people who bring flesh and blood to its created structure. Some of the becoming is welcomed, hoped for…….and other forms of becoming are ones that many push against and seek to reject, want no part of.

And yet becoming continues. Whether we like it, long for it, reject it or resist it. What might our lives be like if we leaned into the becoming that is presenting itself right now? How might we wake up to the becoming that is planning its arrival? One of my spiritual mentors, Anne Lamott, throws these words of becoming out for us to ponder…..”Because this business of becoming conscious, of being a writer, is ultimately about asking yourself, How alive am I willing to be?”

Whatever path of becoming is calling to you, niggling its way into the soil of your soul, perhaps the ultimate question is ‘How alive am I willing to be?’ Indeed…..whether iris or graduating student, whether church or individual lives…..being alive, fully alive seems the real, deep act of this becoming work.

So…..How alive are you willing to be? Becoming is happening. How will we give ourselves to it?

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Fallow. This is a word that floated into my mind yesterday. I have no idea where it came from but knew it was significant. Most often the word is used to describe farmland……. land that is ‘plowed and harrowed but left unsown for a period in order to restore its fertility.’ It has been some time since I sat down to add to these pages or taken up any of the creative work that fills me up. The spring has been coming to our days but I have found myself in a place of distance from it. It has been unclear what that is about and so I have been sitting with it, trying to make sense of what it might be that has caused me to remove myself from some of the very things that bring life. Certainly putting words together on a page is one of those life-giving activities and yet I have found myself pushing away, choosing instead to do other things, anything, that would occupy my time and my thoughts. Has this ever happened to you? But as the word ‘fallow’ floated to the surface of my psyche, I realized it was what I had allowed for in the creativity that often marks my days.

Usually when these experiences come, the tendency is to think that something is ‘wrong’, that something must be ‘fixed’ in order to get the wheels rolling again. As the word ‘fallow’ was offered to me yesterday, I realized I did not need do a thing. It seemed such a relief that I actually quickly wrote the word down so I would have its memory, its companionship. I carried it with me throughout the day and allowed its presence to expand within me. I said it over and over….fallow, fallow, fallow.

We live in a world that demands constant production. We are pushed by many outer forces to be doing something at all times. Each day can be filled with so many tasks to be accomplished that we can find ourselves in a perpetual state of disappointment. That outer push creates a home even in our inner lives making it difficult for us to simply sit and be, to take the time to ‘do nothing’, to allow for our mind and spirits to be unsown for a time, making room for creativity to germinate. Fallow time. 

In the scriptures, we read the commands to allow fields to go fallow in the seventh year. From these fields will spring new life and the poor will be fed says the writer of Exodus. And the Sufi poet Rumi writes:

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing………..and rightdoing there is a field……..I’ll meet you there…….When the soul lies down in that grass………..the world is too full to talk about.

Have you had the experience where the ‘world is too full to talk about.’? Perhaps some fallow time is in order. Perhaps a respite from all that pulls at your time is the prescription. Perhaps allowing the soul to lie down in the grass beyond any idea of what is right or what is wrong with the world, your life, your day, your desires, your hopes is what is called for.

I am imagining what happens to the soil of a field allowed to go fallow for a year. As the plowed, unsown soil soaks up the warmth of the Sun and embraces the rain as it flows down into its deepest places, nutrients begin to restore. The gentle winds of a year and the storms that rearrange the smallest of particles create a new chemistry for what will come in the year ahead. I can imagine the soil breathing in, resting in the elements that nourish, renewing for growth that is yet unimagined.

And so it is with us. When the soil of our souls is allowed a fallow time, new life will begin to find form, form we could not have had the energy or imagination for without the time of rest. 

So be it.

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If you were busy enjoying the beautiful weather over the weekend, you may have not known that summer arrived. That is, in the Celtic calendar. The season of Beltane arrived on May 1st…May Day in some cultures….and is with us until the end of July. So….happy summer! While our mornings and evenings are still cool and do not feel so summer-like, all one need do is keep a window open and be awakened at 4:30 a.m. to know that the seasons have definitely changed. Whether you call it full-on spring or just plain summer, is up to you.

For many years I have used a small devotional book that follows these Celtic seasons. It is simply called Celtic Devotional and is written by Caitlin Matthews. Each of the four seasons has both a morning and evening prayer practice but also outlines some suggestions for approaching each season. I was particularly drawn to a few of the suggested intentions set forth for Beltane….the season of summer.

They begin: Regularly assess your motivations and your use of the gift of life. I don’t know about you but sometimes my true motivations get obscured by all manner of things……obligation, habit, pleasing others, stubbornness, magical thinking to name only a few. Why do we do the things we do? And what might our days be like if we paid particular attention and were truthful about our motivations. Would this lead to a more honest look at how we use the gift that is our very life? I somehow believe it would.

The suggestions go on: In this busy season, make time for proper soul-nurture. Of course this is an intention for every season. But somehow, in summer, it has been my experience that we can tend to schedule ourselves at the big smorgasbord that is this glorious season without taking the needed time to reflect, to be still, to be silent in the face of all that is being revealed to us. How are we living with the rhythm of summer rather than running full speed into what will soon be autumn? How is the power and presence of Sun’s movements calling to us to slow down and be present to the ‘gift of our life’?

Walk and meditate outdoors for at least a half-hour every day. I did this yesterday. I will confess that I most often walk outside with my phone, using the exercise time to catch up on phone calls. Yes, I am one of those people…..walking along talking to an unseen person. But yesterday I walked with only myself and the grand array as company. I walked like a toddler….or a dog….noticing every new addition to the landscape. Trees are slowly turning from their yellow-green springness to a darker green that spells summer. Tulips, crocuses, daffodils, azaleas…..and oh, my…….the magnolias! One house on my path had white, pink AND lavender lilacs….each with their own sweet scent. 

As you travel through the country of Summer, relate your spiritual journey to the bright gifts of this season. And how could we not, if we are awake, if we are present to all the glory that is everywhere? To see the possibility in each seed that is planted, each flower that is emerging from the tomb of earth that is winter. To gaze at a dandelion and declare it not weed but beauty and beacon for the honeybees that feed us all. To watch the path of the Sun and allow the Moon to bathe us in its ever-changing light. All these speak to the grace and mercy that is gift of the One who breathed us all into being and travels with us in both the darkness and the light of our lives.

The final suggestion: Create a spontaneous dance that physically expresses your kinship with the universe. It seems the only sensible thing to do, doesn’t it? So, welcome to summer. May it find each of us dancing for the gift of our life and the gifts of the life that is bursting forth all around us. I hope to see and do a lot of dancing as the days of summer come into their fullness.  Won’t you join me?

O Spirit, breathe among us here; inspire the work we do.

May hands and voices, eye and ear attest to life made new.

In worship and in daily strife, create among us still.

Great Artist, form our common life according to your will.

~Ruth Duck

A couple of weeks ago now I was taking a break in the late afternoon before I headed into some evening meetings. It was one of those rich, spring days when you could feel the energy of newness, of transformation in the air. Buds on trees throbbed. Grass was pushing up through the recently frozen ground. Overhead some birds sang sweet tunes while the geese honked from their communal formations heading……somewhere. People moving around Lake of the Isles in Minneapolis had an extra spring in their step as they walked, jogged and rode bikes.Free of multiple layers, they were rediscovering what air on skin felt like. Dogs held their noses in the air or darted from place to place honing in on every new scent that was emerging. I

It was a haven of creative energy and just when I thought it couldn’t get more so, I saw a young man swinging a elongated paint brush on a long pole. The paint he was wielding was going onto large canvases laid on the ground. I watched from my car for a bit as his movements created a kind of meditation. His painting movements were more dance than pure strokes. His earbuds were obviously providing some music that only he could hear and he matched his movements to the sounds. It was a fascinating thing to watch. I marveled at the amount of effort he had taken to haul his canvases outside, to carry several buckets of paint. And I was inspired by his ability to focus on his art at hand, all the while surrounded by a current of spring awakening. 

Finally, I got out of my car and walked over to get a closer look at his work. I asked him if I might take pictures and he said yes. I smiled as he continued his painting, his dancing, his creating. Somehow it felt as if I, too, had become a part of this art which was being created. In addition to his painting, he also needed the seeing eyes of another. I simply stood and held the space for awhile and then said thank you as I went back to my car, back to the meetings ahead.

Later I began to think of all the artists…..and that is each and every person…..I encounter every day. Each of us creates a certain kind of art with our lives. Sometimes it is through the food we prepare, the words we say, the friendships we nurture. Sometimes it is in the children we tend, the seeds we plant, the animals we care for. Other times the art we create is in the home we open to others, the prayers we say, the kindnesses shown. While many paint on canvases, others paint walls and stripes on highways while some draw smiley faces on brown paper lunch bags. Other artists I know hold hands at bedsides and offer a gentle presence that becomes a healing balm. There are all kinds of artists because living is creative work.

What art are you creating today? How might the most menial task of your daily walk be transformed if thought of as art? Those of us in the Christian household often speak of the Holy as the Great Artist just as Ruth Duck did in the words above. We also say we are made in the image of this One. And so, if we believe this to be true, our title as artist comes naturally.

Today’s artwork may call for large canvases or tiny palettes. Whatever the medium, may the Great Artist be companion for all the artists……..and that is all the people….. channeling the creative energy found in these spring days.   

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Time is running out. The month of April is nearly over and I have meant to write something about the fact that it is National Poetry Month. There is something so wonderful about the fact that we designate a whole month….not a day or even a week….to the elevation of the frugality of words that become a poem. To honor those people whose work it is to pare and chip away at all the paragraphs of lofty thoughts, ideas, concepts, feelings, until just the right few words are arranged into a poem gives me hope. Hope that we can still see beauty though the world might drag our eyes in countless, horrific directions. Hope in the idea that often it is just the few, well chosen words that make a difference in what is often a cacophony of rhetoric that bombards us each and every day. Hope in the slowing down reading a poem requires. Hope in the art of words.

And so, one hope is that you have read a poem during these evolving days of spring. Think back and try to remember if a poem crossed your path during the last 28 days. If you were in some churches this past Sunday, you may have read Psalm 23, one of the most familiar poems around. Though is is really meant to be a song, it is the poetry of words that pulls people in and has done so for some 3000 years. Perhaps you even memorized it as a part of Sunday School or even an English class.

Poetry and poets are, for me, the prophets of our time. I have been in many a meeting or at an event when the speaker knew that only a poem would do to prove their point…..one they may have been trying to make with thousands of words, slides or videos. Stopping to read the words of a poet, the meaning of the speaker’s message becomes as clear as the affirming heads bobbing up and down.

Earlier in the month I was listening to the local public radio station. I didn’t hear the beginning of the program so I did not know the name of the person being interviewed or even the subject of the broadcast. What I heard was a man from Somalia, now living in this country, say that in his culture poetry was used as a form of persuasion. He spoke of how, often, in a gathering where there is dissension or conflicting opinions, someone will offer a poem to persuade those present, to bring the people to a greater understanding of their particular point of view. I loved this! It sent my mind reeling in a hundred different directions.

Over the last weeks I have been imagining the many subjects that seem to divide us, those for which we gather to argue our point. Instead of arguing, what if we instead spoke aloud a poem?

For those who are wrestling over the issue of climate change, those who want to drag people to their side of the table, might be hushed for a few moments by the words of Sufi poet Hafiz: 

“Even after all these years

the Sun never says to the Earth ‘you owe me’.

Look at what happens with a love like that.

It lights up the whole sky.”

Or what of those who, this very day, are arguing over the rights of those who declare their love and commitment  to one another, rights afforded to some but not to all? What might happen if someone stepped into the words bandied about and spoke these words from one of Shakespeare’s sonnets?:

“O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out

Against the wrackful siege of batt’ring days,

When rocks impregnable are not so stout,

Nor gates of steel so strong, but time decays?

O fearful meditation! where, alack,

Shall time’s best jewel from time’s chest lie hid?

Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?

Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?

   O, none, unless this miracle have might,

   That in black ink my love may still shine bright.“

It would certainly hush the crowd for awhile, I’m sure, if delivered well and with the passion one person can feel for another. 

Perhaps I am naive to think persuasion and poetry can go hand-in-hand.  Perhaps we have too long been ruled by the ‘more is better’ theory of word. And yet, I know every time I stand to read…..”The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.”……at a memorial of a loved one now passed on to eternity, I do so with the full knowledge that not much else need be said. These words, this poem, has the power to persuade those gathered grieving that they do have all they need. That they will get through this. That a few, with emphasis on few, words can speak the wisdom of the ages. That they dwell in the house of God…..forever.

Last week while preparing for an upcoming conference call with some colleagues, I fell into a sentence in the materials assigned to us that has not let me go. The sentence was part of a short piece written by Mark Nepo, poet and philosopher, on The Work of Self-Awareness. His encouragement was toward taking daily measurements, noticing what has changed in us since yesterday, last week, last year and making needed adjustments in how we see ourselves, our living.He writes….”Otherwise, we fall prey to the merciless speed of a reactive life.” As I read this sentence it was as if I received a thud to the chest. Fall prey. Merciless speed. Reactive life. Yes, I knew this…have done it over and over. 

Each day we awake with a fresh page in the diary of our lives. This is the gift of the Sun and its Creator. It is true for each and everyone of us. And yet, I think of the many ways I do not treat this as the gift it is. Most often, I move through the minutes and hours of a day bouncing from one thing to another without harnessing the wisdom of yesterday’s realizations, yesterday’s lessons that sought to make something new in my life. Mistakes understood. Blessings of kind words and sweet smiles, signs of love. Challenging words read or heard, questioned and internalized. Encounters with a child’s vibrant face and an elder’s soft, wrinkled hand. All these combined to make yesterday’s imprint on my soul. In truth, they left me changed, different at day’s end.

Our inclination is to live the old patterns, to get on the treadmill and keep doing what we have done, reacting to each and every pull and tug that comes at us with a merciless speed. We do this in our personal lives, in our relationships, in our institutions. It is so easy to fall into this pattern without ever paying attention to the changes we notice within. The reactive life can have us ticking off things on to-do lists which can feel like progress but rarely allows us to nurture our deepest selves.

What will you do today that nurtures your deepest self? How will you make time for integrating the wisdom offered you over the last days and years, that same wisdom that wants to bury itself in the soil of your true self? I am asking these same questions of myself. With the gift of this new day, how will I stop myself from ‘falling prey to the merciless speed of a reactive life’?

For me, the natural world is a good teacher. Today as I look out our windows, the tulips are reaching toward who they might become in the gift of this spring day. Their fullness will come from patience, warmth, strength against the cold and wind that has returned. Who they were yesterday is not who they will today. They will no doubt need to do some wise waiting in their becoming. 

Watching the many birds who are building nests as they gather materials, I marvel at their drive, their fortitude for the future. Taking the cast offs of humans and other creatures, they are preparing for new life, theirs and their offspring. Many are doing so at remarkable speed and yet intentionality. They have their eyes on what is yet to come. 

May today not find us falling prey to the merciless speed of a reactive life. Instead, may it find each of us….humans, tulips, winged-ones….waking to the gift of this precious day, never to be repeated, pure gift from an unimaginable benevolence, an embracing grace. May this outstretched offering be received with the hope of the new life for which we all long even when we do not realize it.

Blessed be. 

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First. Something always has to be first. You can argue or reflect on the chicken and egg thing but in the end something must be first to get the ball rolling. And in our yard these days,it is the crocuses. The crocuses have been first. Everything else is limping along in that ‘are you sure it’s still not going to snow?’ way we all have of protecting ourselves from the fickle nature of spring. Most of the other green things who are just as anxious, I’m sure, to be here as we are to see them. But they are hanging back, inching into the world with a Zen-like pace. Thankfully, the crocuses decided they were all in and bloomed their way into the world. They were first to start a race that will soon topple us with wonder.

And spring is that time to be filled with wonder. It is a daily watch of ‘what’s happening now?’ and it can sneak up on you. I’ve already lamented that somehow I missed some of the local lakes lose their winter shield of ice. I was busy doing the mundane tasks of what seemed most important on an ever-present list of to-do’s, and ‘Bam!’,was gone. Now water laps at the shores and I missed the chance to say a fond goodbye to the ice that has kept me company for months. Spring is a full time job of watching, of staying awake to the awe.

On Saturday I was sitting in a chair that is just inside our deck doors. I was reading, minding my own narrow business, when a swath of moving yellow caught my eye. A goldfinch was hopping from deck chair to the rocks near our backyard water garden. The sheer sweetness of its color filled my heart with gratitude that I get to exist with a creature so intensely beautiful and so fragile. Watching it take quick drinks of the cold water I wondered at where it had come from, how it had spent its winter. Did it know it was being blessed and had become a blessing to this human hungry for the color and hope of spring? 

Being first has never been my forte. I have never been as bold as the crocuses in showing their first of the season color. More likely to hang back, I want to see if it is safe yet to show up, to let my full,self be shown, be known. What about you? Which is why the purple crocuses with their impossible yellow centers have become such a lesson, such an object of reflection to me this spring. With dead leaves left unraked from the fall surrounding them, they pushed their way through the hard ground and chose to show up. They not only showed up but gave it their all and reached toward the sun with their whole being, being the first to splash the landscape with a hue that pulls at your heart. For what would any of us do such a thing?

This experience with the crocuses and the goldfinch reminded me of Mary Oliver’s Instructions for Living a Life, something I quoted during our Easter Sunrise service: Pay attention. Be  astonished. Tell about it. They are good instructions and ones that, if followed, might lead to a much fuller life. It is what I have been trying to do these slow moving, spring days. I am trying to pay attention….except for that missed ice exit….to all this spring might be offering up. To what is first…and second….and brightest….and most subtle. It is a full time job but one I accept with humility and a deep hope. 

Having accepted the offer of this paying attention, I have no doubt that astonishment will be the paycheck. I know that I will be offered daily, if not hourly, rewards of astonishment. Why, just now I looked out the window in the pale morning light and I can see the forsythia has decided to join the grand parade. Yellow branches of color, like fireworks in the summer sky, are shooting up into the morning. Slowly, slowly, the world is waking up with their showiest selves. 

Pay attention. Check. Be astonished. Check. Tell about it……which is what I am doing right now. 

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