Spring Break

Today is rainy and green with more spring-like temperatures.  This is the way I am used to encountering  spring here in Northern Illinois.  It feels as though it is more than just the beginning of school spring break.  It is also Spring Break, as in spring breaking through the oddness of things sprouting six weeks ahead of time.  I even hear thunder as I write this.  This feels more right.  My heart sings.

Consider this:

A couple simple or not so simple questions:  What helps you get in synch with the world?  What makes your heart sing?  How do you notice, right now, as you are reading this, the newness of the world, and how your are made new within it?

Permission

Today is a lovely day here in Northern Illinois.  The sun is bright, but not too bright.  Everything green has popped.  It looks like last year*s plants in the front pots lasted through the winter.  The elderberry bush in back has new leaves, and the rhubarb promises an early harvest. 

I have always thought of myself as having my own timing for things.  Still, it did not feel like it was really spring before, in spite of the greenness and warm temperatures.  But today is the Official First Day of Spring.  There it is… printed on the calendar even.  Somehow it feels as though I have been granted permission to celebrate spring today.  Not yesterday.  But today.  So much for my own timing.  Somehow I needed the calendar to tell me that it is now ok to celebrate spring. 

Consider this:

What in your life is awaiting permission?  Permission to celebrate?  Permission to grieve?  Permission to dance, maybe?  What needs to happen before you take that next step?  Maybe it takes writing something on the calendar, or posting it on any number of electronic devices.    

Pondering

I continue pondering the rapid season change.  The trees are leafing out already.  The temperatures have been in the 70s.  People in church this morning seemed to have unearthed their summer clothes.  Easter is three weeks off and I wonder whether all the spring flowers will be gone by then.  Get with the program, I tell myself   So what if you were expecting a more gradual progression?  This year is different.  Still, it is hard for me to go from winter to summer, with spring only a whisper of what it usually is.  I enjoy full spring.  I enjoy watching things come to life more gradually.  If I had not remembered last year*s glorious golden forsythia, I might not have known I had not seen it yet this year.  It is mid-March and it feels like late May.  It feels… odd.  Somehow the light and animals and vegetation are not lined up in familiar order.   I guess I will dig out the summer duds this week.  But I*m not quite ready.

Consider this:

Have you taken your temperature recently?  What do you miss?  This rapid season change helps me remember what I was expecting,  not just expecting seasonal change to progress in a particular way, but  also my expectations of the way things usually are, and therefore the way things should be.  These expectations surely can bog us down, or perhaps help us remember the way things were, and understand better our grief at things being different now, our missing things.  Have you taken your temperature recently?  What do you miss?

Re-focusing

Yes, this is an incredibly early spring.  Listening to NPR yesterday, I was surprised to discover there are people who pay particular attention to such things and the impact such unseasonable weather has on the natural world.  Perhaps it is more of interest with all the discussion these days on global warming.  The study of this is called phenology.  I have always been one to delight in new words as well as new ways of looking at things.  I wrote about this on the other blog this morning:  allwillbewellperiod.blogspot.com   

Here, though, the purpose is different.  Here Lent continues, no matter what the weather or temperature.  Lent is its own season.  There may be different reminders of change, of transition, every year, but Lent arrives and offers us a defined period of time to look at ourselves, our spiritual life, our relationship with the people and world around us.   It gives us the opportunity to re-focus on what is truly important.  Sometimes this means clearing our heads of what is not important.

Consider this:

The robins have returned, and I swear, they wake up at 3 AM.  They remind me how easy it is to be distracted by their incessant chirping, even while I delight in watching them hunt for worms during the day:  hop, hop, head tilt, hop, hop, head tilt.   What do you allow to distract you from your focus on God?  How do you see the people, the creatures (maybe the children) God has put in your life?  How might you blink, take a moment, and re-focus on what they have to offer you?  And then, perhaps, how might you consider what you have to offer them?

Spring day...it feels like summer

It is unimaginably spring today.  It seems all the birds have returned.  The trees are dropping pollen to beat the band.  Those of us with spring allergies don*t even have to see the pollen to know it is there.  Still, it seems imperative to open up all the windows and doors and bring the outside to the inside. The cat is already exhausted from watching the birds in the backyard.  He is now sound asleep.  I don*t know whether it is pollen or the sheer outside-ness that makes me sleepy at lunchtime today.  It is not just the natural world, either.  It*s cars and trains and sirens and airplanes, distant noises when the house is all cocooned for the winter.  No more of that muffle that snow provides, either.  

Consider this:

Part of Lent for me is newly paying attention.  Or perhaps paying attention to new things.  What do you notice today that was missing even yesterday?  Maybe it is part of the natural world, maybe not.  It is different for each of us.  We are each given different things to notice, I think.  We get all bollixed up inside when others don*t notice the same things we do.  Sometimes we question our own insight.  Sometimes we question what others see.  What do you notice today that was missing yesterday?  With whom can you share the insight?  To whom might you ask the same question?