Lady Spring Gets Me Every Time
Perhaps it's ironic that a season that represents freedom and rebirth captures me. The Spring catches me in it's grip, and bows me down to the earth. She pulls me to my knees to breath in the sweet intoxicating fragrance of the hyacinth.
I'm consistently struck into awe. A blossoming tree, the chartreuse sheen of willows beginning to leaf out, whispering of possibility. The call of a Blue Jay for the first time of the year, evoking aches of nostalgia, transporting me back to childhood. Who said, we can't travel through time? I certainly fly to the past on the backs of the winged ones, and on airwaves scented with fresh cut grass.
And so, clenched in the clutch of Lady Spring, I recognize my subservience to a Higher Power.
In cultures throughout the world, the springtime is celebrate and rejoiced as a time of rebirth and new life. Simultaneously an experience of the repetitive and familiar yearly cycles, and a strange beckoning into something new and unfamiliar.
I'm grappling with the question of who am I becoming. I am, after all, an adult who has already become. I am a Father and Husband. A Doctor. A Writer. A Gardener and Steward of Land. A Facilitator. I could continue to list out identities, to encode into to words the people I've become over time, but I'm more focused on the mystery of unfolding.
I'd like to invite you into your becoming too. Embrace the notion that as "adults" we don't have to stagnate into some humdrum of a grind. We too are in process.
Children's becoming is clear. They grow by the inch, loose teeth, change shape as their body proportions shift, and leap into new levels of cognitive functioning and emotional intelligence.
I subscribe to the notion that each deepening wrinkle, grey hair, or creak in a joint is a sign of becoming, or at least point to the potential of becoming. I guess we don't have to grow wise with age. We can choose to calcify and stay the same. But we can grow if we choose. Perhaps by our modern standards, these indications of Becoming indicate a decline; a descent out of youth. But most wisdom traditions and intelligent indigenous ways, revere the aged grace that adult Becomings brings.
And so Lady Spring stirs her pot. She moves her dress aside just so and reveals her thigh. She rouses me to conspire with her in Creation.
So far we've planted trees and started seeds (many of our starts were eaten by pesky mice this season). We've prepped beds, and mulched the garlic. And we've dreamt dreams. Or were the dreams dreaming us? Sometimes it isn't clear.
But so far, my newest Heartseeds lay dormant. Perhaps waiting for me to sing the right song or prayer, or for more warmth, or more light. And I get to wait, sometimes patiently, sometimes irked.
And in the meantime, I dance with Lady Spring and the Wonder she brings. I sing my Gratitude. Dance my Love. Play in the Garden. Watch the Birds. And Surrender to her Gifts of Life.
May we all stay open to receive a Rebirth. May we pay attention to the loud and bright floral displays, and to the subtle secret seedling stirrings, out in the world and in our hearts.
With a deep bow,
Noah