yellow

bloom anyway.
you can use this noncommercially only and with attribution, please

water

we needed the rain
you can use this noncommercially only and with attribution, please

deep peace

Tonight I went for a walk. I left at dusk in sandals and a light jacket, just as the sky was going grey.

I went south, moving easy; I smelled dirt, and new-grown bulbs, and trees going into bud, and exhaust and water and things becoming all over the place. I went further and smelled woodsmoke from the bagel shop oven, (open 24 hours and 365 days) then turned to walk along the water in the gathering darkness.

I took the other path tonight, the one I've never taken before. It winds along the far side of the street, between trees and past patches of almost-tulips, waiting to become carpets of colour in the season's change. I found a tucked-away monument cradled in an arc of benches, and quiet patches of grass perfect for reading someday this summer. All the while the lights glinting off the wide, wet ribbon to my right, curling and bending, matching every move of the asphalt under my feet. I resisted the temptation to go barefoot, but I will not resist all summer--I will slip off my sandals and let my roots go down and my leaves go up, like in the Robert Fulghum essay--and no one will know how or why...that's just how it always is. When I got home the sun was down and I was breathing deep, measured breaths all the way into my soul. I could not find spring, but it has found me.

Hallelujah, amen, and blessed be.

PS: I notice Jill has opened up comments. Good job, Jill! That's awesome. And brave. I will continue to resist, for now.

quiet passion

Music changes my life. After several years of contemplation, I finally ordered five CDs by a singer/songwriter named Cindy Kallet, a musician with whose music I have been in love since I was fifteen. Her music is slowly cracking me open, a seedpod in the dry richness of new spring earth. It is hope and grief and joy and regret in one beatiful bouquet. I miss my flute now, I miss singing when I neglect it, I miss hours at the piano, fingers wandering across the keyboard in search of something too deep to say. The guitar over in the corner beckons, a quiet crooking of the finger that says, come. come here and dance with me, let me open you, let me sing with you, cradle me.

deep safety

I find since I came to Canada I'm getting soft.

Certainly not soft on weather--I can honestly find twenty below zero (F) perfectly good weather for going out in.

Certainly not soft professionally--I have worked with more passion and heart and dedication here than ever before, and have agonised more over my work here than anywhere.

Certainly not soft of heart...and yet yes, soft of heart.

While I have become more sure than ever that the fate of my heart rests entirely in my hands, I have also learned to make choices about it, and here it is safe to choose to leave my heart open, door unlocked.

When four Mounties were killed in the line of duty in Alberta, the whole country went into mourning.

When I heard about a school shooting I felt tears rise to the surface, tears for people I did not know in a place I had never visited. Unthinkable tears in New York, Chicago, even Boston stream down my face here; strangers who refuse eye contact hold each other in their hearts and thoughts and prayers and dreams, and those intangibles move people and change the planet, this little corner first. The choice is to act out of love, not out of fear. The choice is to act for the good of the whole, not the good of the scared. The choice is to look for the longer term, the bigger picture, the people not at the table.

People are not always nice here. I still lock my door; I still lock my car. People make mistakes, people are intentionally difficult...but when there is tragedy here, it is tragedy. Loss is loss, and death is death. Here there is a plainness about the things that really seem to matter--life, death, love, loss. I appreciate that in a people. I appreciate the strength underneath, too. There's a deeper safety in this than is ever found in locking gates and battening down hatches. It's a safety that invites growth, and I am unfurling into it.

I find since I came to Canada I'm getting soft, and I am grateful.