Friends,
As I watch our days increase, the rain and the clouds, and the culmination of both in our of late amazing sunsets, I cannot help but to think about the connection of all. We are material, matter, and so is the rock. We are alive, and so too is the bright green moss on the forest floor. We move and run and billow and crawl, so too does the wind. We frolic and play, so too does the doe.
At the same time of transition, I think about willful change and the vehicles we use for change. The seasons change and so do we. Sometimes change is hard and sometimes change is just change. And cultivating our joy and gratitude in change, in all things, can elude us.
Wendell Berry’s words on At start of spring:
At start of spring I open a trench
In the ground. I put into it
The winter’s accumulation of paper,
Pages I do not want to read
Again, useless words, fragments,
errors. And I put into it
the contents of the outhouse:
light of the suns, growth of the ground,
Finished with one of their journeys.
To the sky, to the wind, then,
and to the faithful trees, I confess
my sins: that I have not been happy
enough, considering my good luck;
have listened to too much noise,
have been inattentive to wonders,
have lusted after praise.
And then upon the gathered refuse,
of mind and body, I close the trench
folding shut again the dark,
the deathless earth. Beneath that seal
the old escapes into the new.
For each of us, I pray that old escapes into new and that we remember our connections to friends and neighbors and strangers, our connections to all life and all material. And that we find newness of life in this changing world.
Peace,
Rev. Will