Dear Friends ~ May, the month of spring in its fullness, a lovely midway point in the journey to the glorious long hours of summer light. The season is one of blossoming and resurgent life. There is much to be grateful for, to celebrate, to love. Yet as I walk in the greening forest so dear to me, I hold the knowledge that nothing stays: I have left my daily, intimate acquaintance with this place. The forest, for her part, is passing too: already the bluebells by the river's edge have vanished; the dogwood blossoms have fallen. Moreover, the changing climate is putting its own mark on many of the places and beings I have cherished. This is the exquisite melody of mortality. Mary Oliver hums it in giving her well -known advice on living from her poem "In Blackwater Woods":
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
Ah, but how? How to sway gracefully in this bittersweet, ever -changing, threshold dance of receiving and letting go? How to open the heart knowing that sooner or later it will be broken?
Not for answers, but for courage, I turn to those wiser than I, to the "soul -criers". When I am weary of holding my head up, I follow the advice of Martin Shaw and "allow the great soul-criers to do it for me". Astonishingly, the song they cry is one of belonging and joy, the deep knowledge of having a place in this wondrous, wheeling universe; of being eternally companioned, blessed to behold beauty and to see the miraculous in the everyday, to walk moment by moment in the presence of the Holy.
In this glorious and beautiful springtime of the world, may it be so. ~ Lindsay