More on Resilience

Before March slips over into April,

let's reflect a little more on resilience.

Here is a book about resilience.  It is easy to find your life in these pages even though it is about Clarissa's uncle who, after being wounded and broken in spirit by war, returns  to life through planting trees and gardening.  In this lovely  book, The Faithful Gardener, Clarissa Pinkola Estes says,

"Something is waiting

for you to make ground for it
so that it can make  

its full presence known." 

She calls her story: a wise tale about that which can never die.  I cannot speak for you (and I know that our stories and our scars are uniquely our own) yet I have experienced a hope and a resilience in myself that seems immortal.  

During the rest of this Lenten season perhaps we could take some time to ponder and pray about what gift we have that is waiting to make its full presence known.  How do we need to prepare the soil of our hearts so that a new presence can be born in our lives?  What do you need to make ground for?   You've heard of 'breaking ground'  and ordinarily that means something new is rising.  

Happy Ground Breaking!

Resilience

Resilience is part of our name.  It is the word I am trying to celebrate during the month of March.  It's been a long hard winter for many of us and for some there is still no sight of Spring.  The ravished land is a marvelous metaphor for what happens in the human spirit.  There are times when what seemed to be blossoming in us comes to a halt and remains frozen, yet beautiful.  How can we trust that the winter of grief in our lives, the deep containers of doubt, the mountains of discouragement can all become teachers for us. Somewhere in the heart of everything is a resilience that wants to lift its face, lift its voice-- and sing its way out of the frozen land of our lives.  AND IT WILL!

YES, IT WILL!  It has its own time.  It will blossom again!  And part of the fertilizer we must bring to it is our belief in it.  The crocus and the shooting-star that you see here are icons of your own resilient spirit. I invite you to own and honor that often invisible face of yourself.  Whether you fully understand this truth or not, you have an amazing rising power in you.  Resilience is your inner guest.

OH!
YOU BEAUTIFUL

RESILIENT

SPIRITED
BUOYANT

STRONG 
AND NOBLE SOUL!

NEVER LOSE SIGHT
OF YOUR
BLOSSOMING POWER.