The long winter

It's been raining here for days on end -- for weeks and months, actually, and everyone I meet is tired of it, desperate for sun.  It still feels so much like winter -- heck, it was 35 degrees in the middle of the afternoon yesterday, and there was snow on the back of the car in front of me as I was driving across the bridge; we even had a frost last night, despite the cloud cover (thanks to the north wind that was pounding our beach again). 

This is just so NOT April in the Northwest, though we are awash in daffodils and (sadly) downed cherry blossoms, and the tulips are starting to raise their heads.  It's hard to believe Easter's only a few weeks away... harder, still, for many of us to keep our spirits up when sunshine and warmth seem only a distant memory.

But joy is there, I'm certain, as ready and eager to bloom in our hearts as those bright yellow lilac buds at the bottom of this photo.  The potential is always there; we just have a tendency to forget  how lovely life can be when the slog through the darkness gets overly long.

I love the opening lines of Joyce Rupp's "Springtime Prayer", from her book, Prayers to Sophia:

"O Dancer of Creation,
the earth awakens to an urgent call to grow.
In the hidden recesses of my wintered spirit
I, too, hear the humming of your voice,
calling me, wooing my deadness back to life."

I'm just not quite hearing the humming yet.  If I could command it, I'd say -- in the immortal words of Star Trek's Captain Picard -- Make it so!  But instead I just need to be patient and wait; to trust that change is in the wind...