Spring and Our Own Growth

 A friend wrote that the life of faith is linear because "life with God moves always forward." Yes, but more and more the movement of my life with God feels circular, cyclical. 

Saturday we drove into the country on unfamiliar roads. Maybe we had been on some of them before, but not at the same time of earth's unfolding. The fields had an almost scrubbed clean look, steady and quiet, but I imagined the soil actively warming itself, preparing to receive the seeds of new growth. 

I saw trees at their barest, skeletal branches open to the sun, ready to welcome their own greening. They've done this before, but still it feels new. Against the unadorned landscape was the occasional hard to miss surprise of willow trees, forsythia yellow in color, leading the way into the exuberance of spring. Don't you love the reminder that not everything happens at the same time?

I saw an eagle's nest and caught a glimpse of a white head, like a ping pong ball, poking out from the nest. Eagles return to the same nest year after year. Some years their young survive, but not always. I think about how often I see eagles, even in my own urban neighborhood, but each sighting thrills me. In ponds and small lakes, wherever there was open water, I saw swans swimming, a fairy tale ballet with spring as the encore. 

We've been here, the tip of spring, but it feels stunning, astonishing every year. And we are part of that miracle, for we have moved forward from where we were a year ago to where we are now. We are not the same. Perhaps we look basically the same, but we know underneath the surface we have changed. 

We may have suffered losses. We may have worried and wondered and waited. We may have raged, but also been resilient. Perhaps even as we have recited litanies of what we miss, we may have found spaciousness and even focus for our energy, our gifts. This has been a time like no other, but even in that otherness, we may have experienced the movement of God and glimpses of who we were created to be. 

At one of our stops, an antique shop, I bought a bundle of twisty, curly pussywillows, another one of those signs of spring I count on. Normally, I buy them in the grocery store's flower section, and they are quite domestic looking, manageable and straight. This bunch of pussywillows, however, looks wild and unexpected. I can almost hear them whispering, "Spring will return, as it does every year, but maybe it will feel different, be different. Maybe you are different."

Here's what I think about moving forward in my life with God. Each single step feels like I am moving on a linear path, but when I look back after taking many steps, I see I am on a curve. The curve doesn't lead me back to where I have been, but rather carries me through the cycles of life, the cycles of the universe and invites me to find new growth. 

An Invitation
Spring is just beginning here in Minnesota. You may be in a different stage of spring. What are you noticing this spring? I would love to know. 

NOTE: It has been a heavy week. I invite you to pause and lift these names:        Soon Chung Park, 74;
                    Suncha Kim, 69;
                    Yong Ae Tue, 63;
                    Hyun Jung Grant, 51;
                    Xiaojie Tan, 49;
                    Delaina Yaun, 33;
                    Daoyou Feng, 44
                    Paul Andre Michels, 54.

One More Note: We celebrate our son Geof's 42nd birthday today. He is a blessing in our life.