This is Spring
Children gambol on the gentle hillside between our houses where forsythia blooms. The fronds adorning the old willow stump are filling out, a green fountain. These are bright compositions of happiness and hope, the faithfulness of Earth greening once again. Yet for me they are splashed with other thoughts and emotions. Perhaps it is the times in which we live or, just as likely, my particular heartbreak, but there are moments when I crave a more mottled canvas. In The Seasons Book Parker Palmer writes
…there is a hard truth to be told: before spring becomes beautiful, it is plug ugly, nothing but mud and muck. I have walked in the early spring through fields that will suck your boots off, a world so wet and woeful it makes you yearn for the return of ice. But in that muddy mess, the conditions for rebirth are being created.