Gratitude

For Spring and Words

tight-fisted 
Easter daisy buds wake frosted 
poised for spring

Easter daisies, Townsendia exscapa in the language of science, are usually the first prairie wildflowers to bloom here. Their tightly closed flower heads appear as early as mid-February, and bloom a month or so later. The plants are low, no more than a few inches tall, and spring (pun intended!) from a thick taproot, blooming even in dry years like this one. They give me hope.

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Good morning, Friends! It’s Wednesday, midway through the work week and a good time to flex our gratitude muscles, especially if we’re not feeling particularly grateful.

Just the exercise of searching for something to be grateful for is powerful, engaging the empathetic part of our brains and giving our mood a boost. So take a minute to find something to be grateful of, and write yourself a note about it.

Today, the first day after the Vernal Equinox here in the Northern Hemisphere, I am grateful for spring and words. Spring because even though we are back in drought after a promisingly snowy winter turned dry and warm in late January, the days are now equal to the nights and getting longer and lighter.

(It’s the day after the autumnal equinox for those in the Southern Hemisphere. The beginning of fall brings a time of sweet slowing into winter.)

The coming of spring means light and life renewing itself, and that’s infectious. It’s no wonder that our ancestors in the temperate latitudes celebrated spring in a host of ways centering on the concepts of resurrection and renewal. Because as winter eases and the land greens up again, we all feel a quickening of the blood, a “springtime in your soul,” as John O’Donohue put it in Anam Cara, A Book of Celtic Spirituality.

There is a lovely phrase in Gaelic, ag borradh, that means there is a quivering life about to break forth. … Consequently, springtime in your soul is a wonderful time to undertake some new adventure, some new project, or to make some important changes in your life. —John O’Donohue

I wrote about springtime in the soul and spring-cleaning my internal baggage in my last Sunday Reflection. For me, that metaphorical spring-cleaning was a way of preparing for spring, this time of life “breaking forth” anew. A figurative way of sweeping out the old and making space for the new, or renewed life and creativity, adventures and projects.

Easter daisy (Townsendia exscapa) in full bloom. Tiny, but a powerful sign of life’s renewal!

A Springing Forth of Words

And wouldn’t you know it, yesterday, on the official Vernal Equinox, I started a new project, or renewed an old project, depending on how you see it. I picked up the very tentative and very rough draft of my new book, which I wrote in a rush last summer and then put away to “season” and haven’t looked at—or even thought about much—since.

For the past week or so though, the story has suddenly been on my mind. Yesterday it bubbled up so urgently that I sat down and wrote a new beginning (which may also be the pitch for the book proposal), and then went right into the first chapter.

Here’s a bit of that new beginning:

I want to tell you a story.

A story about a place that saved me, that nurtured me when I thought I was one doing the nurturing. When I didn’t realize I even needed nurturing. Only much later, after two of the most important people in my life died within nine months of each other, did I realize the relationship had been reciprocal all along, the place holding me as I held it.

This is a story about falling hard for a piece of ugly, vacant industrial land and a thread of polluted, trash-filled creek. About resolving to restore both to health. And having little idea of what that meant or how long it would take.

About sweating and pulling and digging and planting until your cells become part of the gritty soil and gurgling creek. Until the place becomes your salvation, your lifeline when your own life falls apart.

This is a draft, mind you, and might change entirely as the story spins out. But today, on this second day of official spring in the Northern Hemisphere, I am profoundly grateful for spring, and the springing forth of words in my life.

How are you celebrating spring? (Or autumn, if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere?) What are you grateful for?

Hit the comment button and share if you feel moved.

I am celebrating by nourishing the flow of words into a new story. And that feels like springtime in my soul indeed.