Invoke the Spring

 Just two weeks ago, snow covered this mountain and the manzanitas were laden with frozen flowers. Two days later, the snow was gone, the manzanitas were still blooming, and bees, both domestic and wild, were droning in the branches. And the black oaks, bare limbed and snow-covered, leafed out after two days of sun.

Life is like that, I’ve found. One day, the clouds roll in, the cold torrent falls and everything seems bleak. In due course, though, the sun comes out, the thaw sends trickles of water chuckling down the ruts and there’s a sweet fragrance in the air. I try to remember this, on my more pessimistic days. Everything cycles. Stasis is an affront to the natural rhythm of things. 

So I’m supposing that this is true for the larger cycles, too. I’m thinking of those historic patterns of repression, war, famine and benighted ignorance; of corruption, greed, and  social inequality. Surely, this long, cold night of human suffering will yield to a dawn. The thaw will come; the flowers will give their honey. If it were not so, I don’t know why any one of us would want to continue on, into the maelstrom that we see and sense is brewing all around us. So hold the cyclic nature of things close to your heart. Invoke the spring, in all its glory. Everything cycles. Stasis is an affront to the natural rhythm of things. The darkness cannot last forever.