today, I scatter birdseed
into the open mouth
of the deep inhale of the year,
this time of waiting,
in which all heartbeats—
big and small
winged and furred
me and you—
must tumble together.
in quiet preparation,
spring is laying out her best vestments,
lichen-delicate and newborn-green,
to be blessed by the dew
on the bare arms of the trees
and the flame-haired saint
is lying on the wet grass,
chin tilted to the sky,
palms open to receive the rain,
remarking:
it’s a bit warm, isn’t it, for January?
The broccoli is up. First blush of the January greenhouse seeds, some of the hardiest you can plant. Tiny pale seedlings, invited by the strange warmth of the last few days to rise up and take a look around.
The first awake, wondering when their pals will join them. And I, a little gardener with my feet in the soil and my crown in the sky, whisper over them:
Soon, little ones. Soon!
In the northern hemisphere, this is what I often think of as the waiting time of the year. Maybe that’s why it can be so difficult for so many people. It’s winter’s long, long goodbye, peppered with occasional unseasonal tastes and teases (like a day of sunshine, or a day over fifty degrees, or the creaking song of the perpetually-perplexed frogs).
And yet, everything takes longer in January and February. The soil is cold, and anything planted in it takes a long time to germinate. The wild shoots and buds appear, but soooo slowly. What would take days in the summer takes weeks, now.
That goes for us, too. We move slowly through time like tides, looking for margin where we can find it, careful not to rush. My brain often feels like a full cup of tea, these days: walk too fast, and I’ll spill over. What a mess.
God’s lesson in our waiting—any waiting—is that in the absence of anything else to do, we still must breathe. Sure, our modern world is full of distractions, but when you strip those away…it’s just the breath, left. Breathing into the hours. Anchoring down through our feet, our sit-bones, our spines, and feeling the air filling us, leaving us, returning, the ever-present rhythm of God’s spirit in our daily, humdrum, mundane.
Even so, in this waiting time, we breathe. And all of Creation breathes with us. We lift our heads like seedlings to the cold dawn, feet in the soil and crowns in the sky. We wonder: are we the only ones waking?
The Grand Gardener’s voice returns to us, over us, a benediction:
Soon enough, little ones, it will be spring.
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Only a month away for the Spring peepers. (We're hoping they beat the drought).
Creator positioned them as remedy for cabin fever / seasonal affective disorder. They're better than Prozac!
yes and amen