Thoughts on Setting Out (late spring edition)
My invitation to you,
Be willing to go to the expanse of your joy.
May this brief postcard and talk ground you in a shifting time of transition.
See you further down the road my friend,
Morgan
I plunge my trowel as deep as it will go - through the wood chips, scraping against the metal post and the metal bed frame. The weed I am sweating to remove, thick to the core and painfully spiky to the touch, meets me at an impossible edge of the garden bed. An impossible growth path, yet it’s unimaginable position has guaranteed its survival - at least until this moment, this encounter, where - as the task demands - I am bent on nothing else but its removal. With each press of my shovel, a new wave of creatures emerge for the unseen depth of living soil. They scramble, escape and flee - creeping, crawling, slithering from the excavation site.
In the days of May, dazzled by the return of green, the fireworks of irises, the morning alarm of birdsong, I’ve easily forgotten these creatures I celebrate in October - the spiders, the slugs, the worms and the beetles. Tending more to the topside of my garden now, my thoughts have been with the yellow rising daffodils, the towering greens of garlic, and when I have enough intention in my being - the ever present weeds.
But as I see these wriggling beings now, even feel a little frightened by their below-earthly type movements, I am reminded that they are still here. They are part of the thriving. And I get the chance to practice again.
I have been reflecting on the similarities between late fall and late spring - a symmetry I’ve never considered before. In personality, they couldn’t feel more different to me. Fumbling in the dark / Leaping toward the light. A time for quiet and reflection / A time for action and community.
But in energy, they share a signature: Transformation.
Each signal a turn in direction of the spiral of time, a going back in seeming the exact direction from which we came.
What the composting and the falling leaves of autumn do for life - the rains and the mud of spring do as well; create a rich soil.
It’s a mess (from a human perspective). From that mess, an unfathomable amount of Life feeds.
All of this reminds me of something I wrote in winter; “In retrospect, I wish I would have let myself go more fully into the grief I felt in November. From here, I see now that it would all be ok. I wish I would have gone to the depth of that feeling.”
And now, at this next moment of transformation, I am willing to practice again.
A similar call to courage: are you willing to go to the expanse of your joy?
Like facing our darker moments, I think it too takes courage to face our joy - a courage different in personality but similar in energy. Both moments, bends in the spiral of time, take the courage to encounter Life.
In this spirit, here is my Late Spring invitation to you my friend:
Let yourself be an expansive landscape where all parts are welcome. Let the warm air move through you. Let inspiration surprise you! Be open to being dazzled by all that is coming to life to and through you. This act of uplifting our joy - however unplanned or surprising to us - celebrates where we have come from, celebrates the spiders and the worms and the compost, all the resources it took, we took, to get to this point. Can you revel in your contradictions? In your diversities of splendor? Can you be the wild mess from which Life feeds?
Happy Beltane, happy late spring my friend.
I will be tending this exploration of transformation, the turning of direction, and the expanse of joy through to Summer Solstice, June 21st, when I will write to you again.