Spring

The calendar tells me it is Spring but as I write this I am looking out my window at about six or more inches (I've not measured) of snow that fell on the streets of my city last night.  I slept beneath piles of blankets with my cats snuggled close. On the surface it appears as though Spring is an event that will arrive only in some distant and imagined future.  

At first glance I see only snow and ice, but I also see a sky that has been growing steadily brighter since the Winter Solstice in December.  For the past couple of weeks I've been hearing an increase in the variety and volume of the morning bird songs in the tree outside my window.   I'm sure that somewhere in the soil there are seeds that are starting to quiver, trees are preparing to fatten their buds and creatures great and small are stirring.  Inside myself I am feeling antsy; I don't want to sit still.  I am waking up from Winter's slumber and I am so ready to come out of hibernation.  Even though the air is not yet warm, and there is snow on the ground Spring is happening.

I often find parallels between the cycles and events of the natural world and my own rhythms (we are after all animals).  When there has been great change within myself, it rarely happens all at once.  It, .like Spring, is often subtle; taking it's time in germinating deep within myself, working its way through my subconscious before finally breaking through to the surface.  

There will be a day soon when we look out the window and it will seem like the world has greened overnight.  The breeze will be warm and carry the scent of lilacs and broken soil.  It will seem as though it happened in an instant, yet the process that brings us that day will have been moving along slowly, incrementally for months. 

Spring reminds me to be patient and that like a snowstorm the day before the first day of Spring, there will be unexpected hurdles to overcome, but Spring will eventually arrive and all our planted seeds, the literal and figurative, will push their greening leaves through the soil. 

Happy first day of Spring!