When You Know It's Spring

The landscape added a new layer of color last week.

Early whites and yellows, subsequent burgundies, and then peaches, oranges, and tans are now joined by bluebonnet blue, and each newly entering shade pushes winter a little farther away. Slowly, the cold is fading back into the recesses of time.

Every few days a new shade of color joins in transforming dull, dead colors to bright, vivid ones.  Everywhere, everywhere, it's there - you can feel life brimming full and fertile.

Crazy, isn't it? How life brings life. How flowers contain the seeds that continue their own existence. How the earth continues wandering through this cycle of seasons, and winter brings forth spring. How the dormant can wake.

Crazy how my life can line up with nature. How I go through seasons, and some part of me that fell asleep can wake up. I want to live, not just exist, but live fully, growing, spreading, reaching. Seasons happen; they'll happen again and again, spring leading to summer, then fall, then winter, till spring struggles its way through again. That's the way life is sustained.

And that is what makes it beautiful.

Here, the smallest things are what we notice the most, and we rejoice in them, delighting simply because they are, because we are, because all things - all things - work together for good. 

We might not have totally passed the recurring cold spells; regardless, we are now well into spring. Just this week, strong winds ushered in heavy thunderstorms and left windows rattling late at night - but sometimes drops running down tree trunks, drops running down human faces, reach the roots and begin to build from there.

All of creation knows and sees, and even the smallest among us are transforming, ready to take flight, ready to soar...

...ready to be fully alive.