Insects singing, larvae, pupae, seeds celebrating their fecundity, cones opening, draped boughs undulating from trunks connecting earth to sky, everything vital, everything expressing a divine Spirit, God filling all space. A single swirl of energy–birth, growth, feeding, breeding, decay–all of it continuous Life, teeming with mystery, and she a part of it.
She felt an incoming and an unfurling, a momentary mindlessness, a long-awaited union, a beautiful silent Oneness, and she was left with an unutterable calm.
No matter what the weather looks like outside the window, life is warming up. Something in nature knows what it is doing; even if from time to time winter icily touches the napes of our necks with its cold fingers. . . . Woods will fill with black-birds and grackles, and swollen buds will cling like small birds to wet branches. . . . Old oaks sleep as long as they can, while the rest of creation exhibits an aching restlessness to move on. As everything begins to move, an almost forgotten song plays in our chests, the music of beginning again. The early small birds flit here and there on the rising winds; a lone, red-winged blackbird sits unmoving in the empty cherry tree . . . waiting . . . To live is to change, to move through one transition after another, to reinvent one's life, as needed. . . .