onbeing

Winter Newsletter: Noticing Through Shifting Lenses

Spring—it has arrived early in the Pacific NW, at least where I live. Or maybe it is because I walk Joey the Pug twice a day I have time to “micro notice” the subtle changes of the season. And my noticing changes depending on weather, Sun and Moon’s position in the sky, time of day, what I’ve been reading/watching/listening to, my body’s strength (or aches,) Joey and my pace, etc. Slowing down though, has been essential.

Daffodils began blooming in early February. In my likely faulty recollection is it is usually March before they truly bedazzle gardens and roadsides. Winter birds songs have shifted from rehearsal to full-on symphony mode. The House Finches are back flitting from the barely budding Dogwood to the birdbath on my deck and I am guessing nest building is well underway in anticipation of mating season.

Grief Never Fails Me

Spring finally arrived and it has been so dang frenetic and my still winter-paced body has been in overwhelm. The season was a good three weeks later than last year, as evidenced by my camera roll, with cool mornings and cold rains and lots of mud lingering well past the “April Showers” phase. The greens, as if suddenly alert to the change, are verdant, vivacious, vivid, and a full thesaurus of vibrant adjectives. Then there are the blossoms, the birds and all the wildness of this burgeoning season in full glory. It is so alive. And it isn’t that I don’t appreciate walking in the sunrise light and not having headlight-glare driving in the early evening hours. But, as I noted recently to a friend, as this season of flowing is upon us, I have felt more like ebbing. Finding stillness in the eruption of Spring energy can be challenging. Perhaps I should contact my Aussie friends and go to the Southern Hemisphere for a few months. A recent unseasonable heatwave has compounded the urgency in the air as if proclaiming “Summer is already here!” I haven’t even come on board with Spring. Sigh.

Growing Toward Loss

On of my favorite radio programs/podcasts is OnBeing with host Krista Tippett. On their website it says it is a “public radio conversation” as well as “publisher and public event convener.” Speakers explore the question of “what it means to be human and how do we want to live.” The website goes on the say: “We explore these questions in their richness and complexity in 21st-century lives and endeavors. We pursue wisdom and moral imagination as much as knowledge; we esteem nuance and poetry as much as fact.”