Everything is gray and brown now at the end of winter. It’s easy to feel the despair of the world. Death has had its way. This is the time of volatility and storms in our weather and it seems it is the time of volatility and storms in the world. Temperatures rise, temperatures fall, and shifting winds blow. The gray clouds sweep across the sky and I feel uneasy as the changes start to occur. Yet sitting on the ground with a large flock of robins – 80, 100, how does one count when they are so spread out and never sit still? – I see the tiniest shoots of green. Looking closely at the willow tree I see almost imperceptible buds beginning to form. On this unusually warm morning, I am greeted by a swarm of bugs for the first time in months. In a nearby tree, a downy woodpecker is drumming away, perhaps looking for emerging bugs or trying to impress a mate. A cardinal sings and the winter sparrows search for what they might still find in the leaf litter. I see my first flock of red-winged blackbirds in a while and keep a lookout for the turkey vultures who will return soon. Two beavers are actively building something in the cove. Soon everything will shift. The mergansers, juncos, song sparrows, and ring-billed gulls will head north. Even now the owls and eagles have taken to their nests and soon the cardinals, doves, goldfinches, and hawks will follow. The great migration of birds will pass through. Shorebirds, ducks, geese, swallows, warblers – hundreds of thousands of birds of every shape and size. It will happen before I know it, the gray tree will turn green. The bug-catchers will return and the beautiful spring singers will sing. All that energy is building. I can sense it in the soil, in the trees, in the birds, and in the air. Change is coming. Inside myself, fear rises and falls mixing with sadness and despair and…hope. Our greatest hope is that everything changes. Our greatest fear is that everything eventually is lost. I struggle with the losses, with the great calamities of our times. With climate change, species destruction, war, pandemics, and age. I place my faith in the tiny, green shoots in the grass. Even in the bugs reemerging from the soil. Life finds a way. Life gives us light in the dark.
Not going to lie, it is hard to maintain my level balance in the world right now. It’s easy to feel like Frodo, looking for comfort in a wise being like Gandalf.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,’ said Frodo. ‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
-Frodo Baggins and Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring
Mike Snowdon wrote a beautiful post on “Everything is Amazing” talking about brain fog, ways to help, and ways to get out of our heads as we try hold Ukraine in our hearts.
One way to help Ukraine through Together Rising
After stressing myself out so much my back and neck tightened up like a vise, I have doubled down on meditation, audiobooks, and journaling this week. I have been using a meditation app called “Ten Percent Happier” and am finding it very helpful. (If you want to try it, this link should give you a guest pass for 30 days of free access.)
I have never been more thankful for the great privilege of sitting by our small county lake at sunrise listening to the birds. It is where my prayers flow most easily.
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