Beauty Springs

Spring has sprung, and my world is blooming.  Just a week ago the forecast was cold and grey, but today the sun was beaming at a whopping 83 degrees and gave me my first slight sunburn of the season as I walked around snapping pictures of Davidson's beauty.  Today I am thankful for the reminder in the new leaves that “there is a time and season for everything,” and that we shouldn’t be worried when colors fade.  They speak to me and tell of how they are made beautiful by their transience: change is what gives rise to bursts of red and orange before a long silence.  Change is what leads us to where blossoms spring.  They remind me that all this color was contained in the smallest of seeds, of the resilience within each living thing, and of the promise we have to be revived and renewed.

Today gives me hope that, within every dormant tree and disheartened person, there is life waiting to bloom again.

The Seed Market by Rumi

Can you find another market like this?
Where,
with your one rose
you can buy hundreds of rose gardens?
Where,
for one seed
get a whole wilderness?
For one weak breath,
a divine wind?
You've been fearful
of being absorbed in the ground,
or drawn up by the air.
Now, your waterbead lets go
and drops into the ocean,
where it came from.
It no longer has the form it had,
but it's still water
The essence is the same.
This giving up is not a repenting.
It's a deep honoring of yourself.
When the ocean comes to you as a lover,
marry at once, quickly,
for God's sake!
Don't postpone it!
Existence has no better gift.
No amount of searching
will find this.
A perfect falcon, for no reason
has landed on your shoulder,
and become yours.