Our tanks runneth over and the garden is wet, the days are growing longer is it spring yet!!
The water draws me out, I can feel the sap rise and my weight sink into the mud.
The buds swell and then freeze and then thaw again to bloom full.
Spring is erratic around here, unpredictable and swinging for months from perfectly perfect days like today and then the blustery dusty days that have past, but we all know will come again. Death and birth as so closely linked that spring is not always comfortable and smooth, but so full of promise, a bloom around every corner, a tiny miracle reminding us daily that all this flux is worth it. Hope is what draws the shoots upwards and our faith in new life what carries our spirits forward towards the ever shining sun.
This spring especially, I am fully embodying rebirth, now being 6 weeks into parenting two children all the metaphors of spring are my daily truth. These past weeks have been a tender and transformative time for my family with all the gifts and shadows spring brings.
We have all been born into a newness; my son now a brother, my husband and I now responsible for two little lives and our daughter, brand fresh new to it all!!
The baby bubble is starting to expand and we are all slowly dipping our toes back into the “real world”, but really what could be more real than this? Birthing life is down right as real as it gets. Luckily my work is aligned with the cycles of the seasons so I have a very gentle transition from winter to spring, all I MUST do these days is feed the family and plant my seeds.
I go from the rocker to the kitchen to the garden and back and though I didn’t go to school for this, I realize how well suited I am for the work of nurturing and nourishing life. As my dad put it, “good work, if you can find it.” And though it ain’t always easy, it really is good.
So today I take the gift of life carefully into my hands, rolling it over, feeling it’s texture and weight for the very first time. Seeing it all with new eyes, washed clean by the spring rains and time in the cave of winter. There is a rawness to it all, an uncertainty, but faithfully I embrace the precious possibility that rebirth brings.
The stars are aligning, the sun eclipsing, the winter departing, the spring is birthing, the door is open for new life just over the threshold. With my new babe in arms I bravely step through with all the faith in my heart that I too will be birthed safely into bloom. And so I wish the same for all life on this blessed birth day of spring.
Excerpt from Birth Blessing By Timothy P. McLaughlin
May this heroic lady, her body still aglow
with a great breaking forth to life,
her soul yet ringing
with the ancient song of nascence,
be granted full restoration and rejuvenation
and an easy, natural return
to this world and its insistent rhythms.
