Behold the Mystery

Spring has finally sprung, and with it, comes the desire to finally emerge. It's been a long, hard winter, even by Minnesota standards, and I couldn't help feeling over the past month, that we were due. Where was the warmer weather we so desperately deserved? Hadn't we been through enough? Funny, isn't it, how we try to control through our expectations, something as uncontrollable as the weather. Who can predict the wind?

I'm pretty sure Mother Nature wasn't making Spring's late arrival personal. And yet, at times, it can feel that way. Just as, now that it's here, it feels we've been rewarded -- personally. Temperatures teetering at 60 make below zero feel like a dream from the dark and distant past. I wonder, is it our compulsion to live in the past and the future that makes a "long, hard winter" long and hard? What if, we allowed each moment to be what it is?

It's easy to do when the days are gloriously sun-drenched and warm, with nights that are still and cool. When the birds outside my bedroom can't contain their joyful warbling much past 5:30am. When our evening walks at the park reveal so many new discoveries -- returning red-wingers, budding birch, sunning snakes -- that we are called back again and again just so we can be sure to take it all in.

But, doesn't each moment hold this kind of wonder if we simply open to it? Like the crocuses springing up from out of nowhere, can we live free from the encumbrances of the past, free from our expectations of the future and behold the mystery inherent in each moment as it is? Can we choose to move toward the light in any situation? At any time? For no other reason beyond that it's there and we're drawn to it?

Maybe it isn't even a choosing. Maybe it will happen naturally, like the coming of Spring, if we just allow it.//