Spring

Spring is my favorite season by far and it is well underway here. Trees are budding and flowers blooming. Bees are everywhere. Life is emerging from the gray and brown winter.

As the seasons change, I remain in the midst of transition. I am still jobless, but financially ok for some time yet. I am slowly moving toward realizing some of my own dreams for my life, trying to let go of the fears that have held me back. I am feeling my way into and through what is proving to be a remarkably complicated relationship; one intended to be totally uncomplicated. But, and I’ve known this for a long time, all relationships are complicated, at least if they are rooted in genuine care and love.

Spring reminds me of the fundamental generosity of life. Scarcity exists when we become selfish, when we focus solely on our own wants and needs rather than understanding where we fit in the beautiful unity of creation. Jealousy emerges when we fail to realize that there is an infinite source of love in each of us to give to one another.

Life is gift. This was the theme of a stewardship campaign at my former parish. It echoed a theme of my priest who often referred to God as the Generous One. God’s very being is Love and love is generous. Creation isn’t so much a work of God as it is the natural result of God’s nature. It is total gift, total generosity.

During Lent, I’ve been trying to give love with this attitude. With no regard or expectation of return. To just give. To give because there is no limit to the love within me because that love draws from the infinite spring of God’s own being. I don’t know that I’m being especially successful, but I’m trying. And that is all we can really do. Try. But we can choose to try harder or not. And surrounded by the glory of Spring, the reminder of the generosity of life itself, I know that I need to try harder.

-David