Faces and phases
Spring is known for its beauty. It is fragrant and bright after a gray, sleepy, secluded season. Winter is a hiding time. Nature is buried in ‘the underneath,’ and we stay cozied up beneath blankets, thick sweaters, hats and scarves — all the layers.
Now it’s as if the trees and flowers are saying, “See me — this is who I really am. This is what I really look like when I’m given a chance to shine.”
But even though a bright, friendly, colorful overture surrounds us now, it doesn’t mean that it’s without difficulty.
Beauty is often equated with ease, but that beauty often accompanies breakthrough — and breakthrough is hard. The primed and polished, finished product is often a result of a painstaking process — one that went unobserved by the naked eye.
Spring is the great unveiling after the unseen, underground process that it took to see all that is in bloom today.
Butterflies emerge and leave cocoons behind. Locusts shed their shells on trees. Even little blades of grass leave off the dirt as they fight up through the soil and grow up and up beyond it.
I wonder how often we think something is a part of us just because it has somehow become attached to us. How often do we claim things that cloud our true identity?
What part of me might be breaking through now? What face will I have after I shake off this next layer of soil and debris? Which part of myself will be unveiled as I journey through this new season?
Cover, uncover. Bloom and grow, rest, repeat. Some circumstances follow us from one season to the next — pain that does not subside, trouble that won’t go, loss that lingers, grief that still comes in waves, and some questions that remain unanswered.
The flower bed is in full bloom, but just behind it is the image of a loved one that was lost this winter. The bluejays have returned to nest, but many are without a safe place to call home. There’s a new song in the air, but for some the travail of past trauma is not finished.
If this spring isn’t your happy season, that’s OK. Wherever you are, whether you are in bloom or beneath the soil — we each have our own unique timing. Go stand outside, be barefoot in the grass, and touch the earth. Let its reprise be a comfort. Love and light to anyone struggling in their body, mind, or emotions. As lovely as it is outdoors, not everyone is able to get out to enjoy it right now. Sometimes, ‘inside’ is all one can manage.
May you find a field all your own, in your own time, and may a friendly breeze greet you in it.
If you don’t have a song right now, the birds will lend you one of theirs. If you are still surrounded by shadow, borrow some color from the flowers just beneath the window pane.
Whatever season of life we find ourselves in — whatever faces or phases we uncover, discover, and behold — there’s a friend to be found in nature, the great expert in seasons.
If this isn’t YOUR spring, well, the thing with seasons is this: They always come back around.