We welcome spring, season of renewal
With the cherry blossoms erupting in shell-pink splendor, we usher in spring, a season of hope and renewal.
As Easter melds into the Passover holiday, we celebrate spiritual rebirth and a surge of rising hope. This, while we are poignantly aware of the fleeting beauty of blossoms, and how time and the seasons of our lives spin by in a finger-snap.
Savoring the flowers, thickening trees and new life outside our kitchen windows, we are also painfully aware of the wars raging in countries far away. Though spring give us hope, it overwhelms us with nature’s power.
With longer days of sun and outdoor play, the coming of spring is salve to the soul, offering a predictable and personal shield in a scary and unpredictable world.
How could it be April already? We were just celebrating New Year’s Eve. As birthdays accumulate, things move faster and faster, all the more important to sit under a cherry blossom tree longer, those goddesses of our gardens whose blossoms burst — and then are too swiftly gone.
Like time itself — so swiftly here, and then gone.
As the season turns, we are noticing a few more wrinkles on our faces, and that are young adult children have started to call us by our first names. We realize some of us are moving slower, while others are still moving too fast.
The coming of spring reminds us that this year is almost half over, this when we have not put any of our 2024 resolutions in action. We are reminded to be grateful for this moment, for our health, for the health of our loved ones and to reach out to our less fortunate friends and family.
Spring’s splashy arrival gives us another opportunity to stop and literally smell the roses, to do better, to be better and to complete those resolutions. Like plants, people, too, can grow stronger and more deliberate and more compassionate under the sun, fueled by warmth and the awe of nature.
We can stash away bulky sweaters and find our favorite
We are poignantly aware with each new season these changes of nature are temporary, like the passing seasons of our lives. Knowing this inspires us to savor the blossoms — holy and magnificent and fleeting.
shorts and T-shirts, swapping boots for flip-flops, wool hats for baseball caps. Lying on a chaise lounge in our backyard, we conjure up dreams that have been cast aside, and ask ourselves: “What is standing in our way?” to make dreams our reality.
Saturated in spring’s bounty, nothing seems impossible.
I dream of life undone that must be done on brisk walks on the Baltimore-Annapolis trail. As the morning sun sends shafts of light on budding trees, I am born anew with the new season, the season of spring that does spring with hope.
I stop to sit on a bench in front of a full-bloom cherry tree, majestic and heaving with beauty and light.
These seemingly surreal offerings from nature are signs of new beginnings, recharging the mind and soul.
As spring trumpets its flamboyant hurrah, we are witnesses to something holy, a fitting backdrop for families sitting down today for their Easter feasts, those in the midst of Ramadan and those awaiting Passover week.
And my irises, for which I got my name, are about to sprout in our garden. They fill me with love, and lovely nostalgia of a mother and father long deceased. This Chicago-raised author remembers the months of leaden skies and huge drifts of snow, that my Dad shoveled daily, his face red from the wind. I adored the sledding and ice skating and the bracing cold, that slapped us awake as children.
When spring arrived, I became, we all became, new people. Spring releases us to lighten up, to shed worries with our heavy clothes. Yes, we are poignantly aware with each new season these changes of nature are temporary, like the passing seasons of our lives. Knowing this inspires us to savor the blossoms — holy and magnificent and fleeting.
This sun-kissed morning, I am on the porch watching a lone sailboat glide across the shimmer on the Severn River. I am alone with my coffee and two fire-red cardinals pecking at the feeder. Many of the trees are still nearly bare, with a tease of greenery on the branches.
Ah, spring — we know why poets and authors have glorified this season of renewal and rebirth, throughout time. To every season, there is a reason, and 19th-century poet Robert Browning captures the essence of spring in this line from his Pippa’s Song:
“All’s right with the world!”