I am thinking about resilience this morning. About renewal through decay, about rebirth and destruction. I am thinking about falling down and getting back up. I am thinking about despair and hope, and perhaps the folly of both. I am thinking about love, and our belief in the need for certain “conditions” to love and thrive.

It is approaching spring. In a little over a week, we set the clocks ahead. Today is Day 7 of the war on Ukraine. There is the horror unfolding in front of us, the spring shouting out with renewal in front of us. not only in Ukraine, but on our own streets, our own communities. Homeless communities blossoming as our own refugees have nowhere to go. We go to our meetings, meet a friend for a walk, make dinner, do what has been given to us to deal with, right alongside our outrage and sorrow that so many are in deep suffering and terror.

I see tanks, blown apart buildings, devastation, and I also think of the earth. I see garbage and the detritus of human suffering everywhere and I think of the earth; our scorched, burned, ransacked, beleaguered earth. I weep and want to turn away.

And yet. I see fern fronds brilliantly unfolding as they do. I see people standing for what is right, bravely and at a great personal cost. I see the buds breaking forth and the cycle of life continuing. I hear of a new baby coming, of a serious illness resolving. A poem comes that cracks open my heart, a breeze at dawn caresses my face and reminds me of the tender ferocity of life. I resolve to bear witness from my cracked open heart.

I remember what Mary Oliver wrote:

“We shake with joy, we shake with grief. What a time they have, these two housed as they are in the same body.”

Shake on, friend!