Inspiration: January 2008 Archives

WHILE I WAS WORKING, SPRING CAME INTO TOWN

To all you beautiful readers, I appreciate your patience while I've been away from the blog. I've missed the exchange. Yes, my schedule has been intense lately. Leaving the house at 5:45 in the dark, crisp, cold morning, and returning home around 8:00 in the evening, dark, crisp and cold yet. What happens between these hours has been a great opportunity to practice presence and focus.

As humans we're wired, to some degree or another, to want things clear, to have things make sense, to have a beginning and an end, to see the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, to feel a sense of accomplishment. But in this work of assisting flood disaster victims the chaos is stunning, and these basic desires must be left behind with an eye to a distant horizon stretching far out into the future.

The schedule knocked me down for a couple of days with a cold-like, flu-like intervention, giving me a stretch of sleep that was long overdue and a glimpse of daytime. To my surprise, while I was working, spring pushed its way out of its slumber through the crust of winter. Walking in the sun of a clear day I had to squint my eyes not believing what I was seeing. I know I've been in need of my glasses more often these days, and I know my schedule has scrambled time beyond recognition, but could that be a bud on that bush? I looked around and saw another on a different plant, and then another. It changed everything. In that one moment of observation winter was behind me, and each step brought such a gratitude for its magnificent silence, its heavy sleep laden cold, and the magic that makes new life.