What season do you inhabit?

Today in my organic ministry class, we were invited by Diane Glass to notice what season best describes our hearts, our relationships, our work.

It is one thing to notice the physical and environmental season that surrounds you… even on a cool and muggy July day. But I had never considered the seasons as a metaphor for my internal life before.

Personally, while I do not feel like I am coming out of a winter time, I do sense the awakening and longing of spring.

I am sensitive to the new life all around me: new babies and expecting friends.

I have the sense in my marriage during this time of renewal of a clean slate, a fresh start, and of nurturing a different way of being with one another.

Even our home, which has been lived in for a year now, is finally ready for some projects that feel like they have potential. We are preparing to finally put up curtains, refinishing some cabinets, deciding what kind of a space and environment we want to create. Outside, I’m doing clearing work and imagining a different sort of landscape and discovering what might be showing up.

So, how do I honor this “springtime” ?

Like with the crocus blooming, I can take delight in these signs of spring.

I can be curious about what I am discovering and learning, open to possibility, listening more carefully.

I can intentionally decide what to nurture and what to pull; where I want to really invest my time and energy.

And I can, like every farmer in the spring, test the waters, throw out possibilities, be flexible, expectant and hopeful that what is beginning will eventually bear fruit.