Spring 2021

What does spring mean to me? What am I looking for?—This was the prompt for my writing group a month ago. And here is what I wrote. Who knew Noah would be part of it?

 Spring 2021—what it means to me

What does spring mean to me? I have to say that after the year we had in 2020, everything needs to be redefined. I feel like we just threw out all our mindsets, all our previous beliefs about life, about democracy, about this country we live in, about how the world works, how nature works, how healing works, etc. Even the greening of the trees is going to be different this year. So, I am hard pressed to answer the question “what does spring mean to me?” The question itself implies a continuity that I am just not seeing.

 This year spring comes as I turn 62, an age that a couple years ago, I had expected to be at the top of my game. In terms of career and finding myself beyond parenting and family, I am a late bloomer. I was just hitting my stride when I turned sixty. A year ago, I was looking forward to leading more workshops, organizing more retreats, and encouraging even more people to listen to the wisdom of the spirit within. Then the pandemic came, then I got cancer, then our democracy started to crumble. And now I just pray spring comes, that God sends us a miracle of new life, of new health. I pray that like Noah and his family, we get to start over after the destruction of the flood, with a clean slate. It will not be easy to start over but I just long for that day when we look up and see the sign that tells us YES!

Will it be a rainbow? How did Noah know that a rainbow was it? Will it be a green bud on that old bush in the back yard that we thought was dead? Will it be my granddaughter reading me her first whole book because she finally got to go back to school in person? Will it be that the numbness in my feet starts to go away and I can walk barefoot and feel the grass? What will be the sign that the spring of our humanity has returned? Will a republican and a democrat suddenly reveal on Twitter that they have been secretly working together and have a plan for cooperation to return to our government? Will we finally understand that healing requires that we breathe the air from the trees on the other side of the world? That we finally understand that healing requires leaning on the wisdom of the water carrier in the Congo even as we offer our financial support to her village? That we finally understand we are one? That we finally understand that we are one.

That will be spring to me this year---healing as community works together, healing as my body finding its way to wholeness again, healing as we reach our hands out and our hearts out touching each other with genuine kindness and care, healing as we finally begin to listen to each other’s stories, healing as we finally agree to support all humans as we would our brothers and sisters. This will be spring to me this year and it might not come in March or April. I don’t know if I’ll see the signs, but I pray that Noah will teach me how to know that a rainbow or the green grass or the eagle flying overhead is a sign that God’s grace has returned to us.

 By Jules Bonde—2/2/2021