Tulip Season’s Quiet Wanderings
I’m in deep appreciation for the beautiful weather and riot of tulips & cherry blossoms dominating neighborhood gardens and meridians all over Seattle at the moment. And oh my, we need this right now. Beauty, hope, color & joy in nature’s certainty. That Mother Nature keeps delivering the seasons, gratefully, without fail, even in light of the damage we’ve done to her, can act as reminder & beacon of hope at our human capacity for resilience in incredibly trying times.
What are you reading, practicing, making or listening to that feeds your soul these days? I’ve been finding newfound appreciation in the simplest of things and loving the magic in these moments.
There’s a big part of me who embraces the forced isolation this pandemic has demanded because as a lone wolf spirit, self-isolation is both a familiar and comforting retreat for me. It’s feeds my need for safety, independence and even freedom- 3 of my core values- so it’s always felt natural for me to pull away from the pack, forge my own way, honoring my boundaries without FOMO (fear of missing out).
This lone wolf spirit though, it requires vigilant self-awareness so that I stay in check before I retreat too deeply into my world and begin to go dark. It’s not introversion or depression, it’s truly to do with my love of being alone with myself & learning, creating, cooking, nesting, deepening spiritual practices, but when taken too far…..the remedy is to come back into connection.
Mark Nepo is a profoundly moving writer, poet, philosopher and spiritual lighthouse whose words speak to our collective soul. I’m feeling particularly moved to share some of his deep wisdom during this season of new beginnings, shedding the old and awaiting the unknown.
“Some days I wake with a cloud around my heart and it dulls everything except the weight I carry deep inside. Yet, just because I can’t make it to the light today doesn’t mean that the light has vanished. In truth, the heart, like the Earth, is continually blanketed by ever-changing atmospheres that come and go between who we are and how we live our days. So faith, it seems, can be defined as the effort to believe in light when we’re covered by clouds, and though it feels like the sun will never come again, the truth is it has never stopped burning its light. In fact, its heat and warmth is burning steadily right now, on the far side of whatever cloud we are under. “
This pandemic will be what it’ll be, and then it will be over. Just as any darkness, shuttered heart or disconnection within us also passes. Nothing is permanent, everything is an evolution of what came before it so nothing really, has ever been certain. We only thought it was, and the certainty we can hold onto now is that change is inevitable, and this too shall pass.
“….all around us, everything small and buried surrenders to a process that none of the buried parts can see. And this innate surrender allows everything edible and fragrant to break ground into a life of light we call spring.
In nature, we are quietly given countless models of hope to give ourselves over to what appears dark and hopeless, but which ultimately is an awakening that is beyond all imagination……”
I have so much hope for how we emerge from this pandemic as a global community and in our individual lives and families. May the dark, hopeless aspects of what we are living through, awaken us to a new, reflective, more patient way of being. This I will believe and embody.
Virtual Hugs