Trusting resilience

So delicate, these flowers and these fronds,

Yet they return each year,

With no encouragement or labor from me.

I’ve come to trust in their resilience;

How can I learn to trust in my own?

Dancing in the wind

And now the season comes 

When the bright poppies — uninvited guests —

Unfurl their golden skirts and lift 

their faces to the sun.

We watch from behind closed windows, masked,

And remember how it felt

To dance together in the wind...

After this pruning

Seeing the fruit trees, wild, and free,

Blooming again after the long cold winter,

Lavish in their impending fruitfulness —

How can we not believe and trust

That after this harsh pruning 

We’ll rebound, renewed in vigor,

Refreshed, resilient, and teeming with new life?

Beauty in a world of pain

The lush abundance blooming in my garden,

Flowers clustering together to greet the sun:

Stark contrast to the empty stores and streets,

The lonely ones who sit at home

In dark apartments wondering

How they’ll pay the rent

Or keep small businesses afloat;

The hospitals where no one visits

And family members die in isolation.

Such beauty in a world of so much pain...

Resisting house arrest

Like boats, trapped in a harbor,

We impatiently await our chance 

To dance again before the wind.

Bouncing against the waves,

We give voice to our frustrations

With loud creaks and sighs;

Bumping noisily against the dock,

Straining at the ties that keep us safe.

Welcoming what’s next

With a wild extravagance,

My camellia tosses her petals to the grass:

A rosy carpet to welcome her lover, spring.

What I mourn as loss, she celebrates:

The next phase of her life; a time for growth.

These gray days

Ah, these gray days, the sameness of them—

They seem to go on forever,

Stretching out before us to infinity,

As if some dark, unimaginable end

Lies waiting in the hungry clouds,

Devouring any light or hope

We manage to generate.

Perhaps instead of looking out

We need to start looking in...

Waiting for the fog to lift

For now it’s hard to see beyond

The rules that keep us trapped:

Beyond this rough-hewn isolation

Disease hovers like a fog.

But we can choose to lift our eyes

And trust the light still waits for us,

And know that when the fog is gone

The promise of the future will return.

Mourning the losses

Yesterday I had to authorize with a moment’s notice

The removal of a perfectly healthy tree.

I couldn’t watch, but later my heart ached

To see her lying there,

Her roots torn out of the nurturing earth,

Her branches blooming madly with blossoms 

That would never now bear fruit.

How is it that I feel such guilt and loss 

For a tree, a simple tree,

When all around us, 

So many have lost so much?

Ready to flower again

However battered and bruised we may be

By current circumstances,

New life and growth are always a possibility.

What was planted in you at birth is perennial,

Inextinguishable,

And will return again at the first sign of light.

Simple pleasures

Perhaps this time apart,

Away from the fuss and flurry of society,

Is meant to remind us of the simpler pleasures:

Light falling on a stump;

The way the dandelions bob their fluffy heads 

Like yellow boats on a deep blue sea;

Or just the luxury of being able

To breathe.

Staying grounded

Left to our own devices,

Moods grow unpredictable:

Sometimes light, often dark,

Occasionally spiraling out of control...

What can we do today to keep

From flying off the handle?

Extend a hand to help somebody else:

Togetherness will help us to stay grounded.

Who are we becoming?

Like the boards of an ancient fence now set aside,

Without purpose, stuck in place, 

I fear I will grow mossy:

Indistinguishable from my surroundings,

I might fade into the earth from which I sprung.

But is it really purpose that I lack, 

Or simply validation?

Who do we become when no one’s watching?

Welcome the light

Let’s greet the new day as cheerfully

As this tiny daisy in my lawn,

Grateful for another opportunity

To welcome and reflect back the light

In some small way.

A time to heal

Whatever masks we wear to protect ourselves

Must eventually be stripped away,

Only to reveal the wounds beneath.

Now, in this blessed time of silence and solitude,

We no longer can ignore 

The heartbreak that divides us.

What steps will we take today to heal

These ancient lacerations?

A simpler life

As the morning sun brings a blush

To the cheeks of the snow-capped mountains,

The farmer turns his now-fed horses

Out into the field and life goes on:

A simpler time, a simpler life,

To which we might aspire now:

A lonely life, but blessed in all

Its natural companions 

and the calm and steady pace

Of all its necessary labors.

How might we help this time to pass

With similar components: to rise, to feed,

To work to bring good things to life 

That nourish and sustain the world around us?

You are never alone

You are never alone.

The sea and sky, the moon and stars,

The grass and the trees, the distant hills,

The rocks and the sand are always with you,

Gentle reminders that even when

The sun has left the sky,

It will return, and what matters will endure.

In the shadows

Make the time to look beneath

The leaves of our exigency,

And you will discover:

Hidden in the shadows,

Growing quietly in the dark,

Impelled by these challenges,

Something new is being born.

Open our hearts to love

The time has come:

The great stone has rolled away; the gate is open;

The flowering of love has begun.

Now is the time to release old hurts,

The words once said in anger; to drop

The pencil in your mind that’s keeping score;

Now is the time to open our hearts to love.

What will be resurrected?

What is it, that we have thrown into the cave as lost,

And what is it that will be resurrected?

I pray that what will rise again

Will be compassion, and kindness;

Empathy, and hope,

And a genuine care for all Creation...

On Good Friday

On a day when much of the world is dark

And worshiping mournfully in seclusion,

The flowers continue to open their hearts to the sun.

Bright message of hope,

Bright promise of renewal,

They remind us not to regret the past,

But to celebrate whatever beauty 

Lies buried in the now, waiting to bloom.

In for repairs

Every engine needs a little downtime.

Just because ours are out of the water for a bit,

That doesn’t mean they’ll never work again.

Think of this as maintenance time;

Time to sand off the rust and grease the moving parts

So when we’re ready to go back out again

We can go full speed ahead. So:

What can we do today

To help bring ourselves up to speed?

Embraced by the shadows

Glancing out my kitchen window,

I find my heart captivated by the shadows on a tree.

What is it that the heart sees that triggers hope?

Is it the way those dark fingers

So lovingly embrace the tree? 

Or is it just the way these shadows

Remind us to appreciate the light...

Remembering freedom

Sheltering in place, I stand

And watch from my window,

Remembering what it felt like to be free...

Within these fierce constraints

Within these fierce constraints

There can still be joy and beauty:

Compressed by circumstances

They can flare all the brighter.

Beneath the masks, behind our doors,

In the safety of not performing before a crowd,

There could be a gentle kind of freedom

To become more fully, more wholly, ourselves.

Palm Sunday

We hold in our hearts a prayer

For all who walk alone; for all the vulnerable;

For all the church doors, once open, now closed;

For those who've died, and for all the ones who loved them;

For all the ones still working to serve,

And all the ones who now are unemployed;

For all the colors, slowly being leached

Out of a world awash in grief:

We no longer wave our palms,

We simply wash them,

Over,

And over.

An opportunity to evolve

Think of yourself as a flower,

Trapped inside a home you’re fast outgrowing;

Safely protected by nature, but itching to bloom.

A restless teen, chafing under parental restrictions;

A butterfly, trapped in her cocoon;

An infant, kicking against a womb

In impatience to be born —

None of these stop growing in confinement,

But rather use the time to become more fully

What they were born to be...

How will we evolve in this time of containment?

Fins flashing among the weeds

Being mostly water, 

we humans tend to mirror back

The colors of our surroundings,

So it’s no wonder we’re all feeling a little gray

With all the dark clouds in our future.

Just remember: below the surface

There are all those bright ideas 

and possibilities, swimming back and forth,

Fins flashing among the weeds.

Perhaps now is a good time to dive deeper...

A time to dream

There Will be a life after this.

It won’t be the same as our life before,

But what if, instead of worrying,

We used this time apart to dream

Of what life Could be;

To imagine what might make our spirits soar?

Patiently awaiting rebirth

As the camellia drops her petals,

My azalea bravely surges forth,

Her first blooms in three years.

I thought she’d died in last year’s frost,

But instead it seems that brought her 

back to life: a minor miracle 

to remind us that the hard stuff — 

the prunings and the frosts — 

Can serve to free us and to bring 

New efflorescence and vivacity to life:
Together we are patiently awaiting rebirth.