I had a post on food and cooking mostly put together, but sometime last week I stopped feeling it, so I moved it to the drafts folder for another Saturday. Instead, I moved outdoors into the chilly but sunny day, in search of spring. I read portions of the three books I’m currently reading. I planted myself in sun rays and closed my eyes and soaked it in. I walked and walked and walked, filtering through all of the things that are weighing on me in the moment, looking for new buds and tints of green.
I’m carrying so many things at the moment, like many of us do. The kinds of things that require appointments and meetings and discussions and slots of time in an already overflowing calendar. If I listed out all the major categories in my life, something major would fall under each one of them – individual, yet so interconnected with timing and direction and money (always), that it’s impossible to break them up into manageable pieces to mark, one-by-one, off the lists. Most are more analytical decisions to be made, but all touch an emotional base to some degree, which further complicates the matter.
But it’s more than that – it’s this overlay of tension and frustration and anger and grief that is so draining, and makes it feel like the season of winter has somehow divorced itself from the regular turn of the natural seasons themselves. What do those tender green shoots in the ground really matter in a world so divided and caustic and wedded to power? Can the sight of that first clump of daffodils ever take away the sting of the massacre of yet another group of people gathered in community prayer? How do we live in a world with both? How does that ever settle into our souls as normal and necessary?
I looked for signs of hopefulness in a chilly wind, under the bluest of skies, and they were there if you were looking for them. It just wasn’t enough today. The grief and despair and frustration is too much for daffodils just yet.
amen.