spring...lightly

it's been a long time since i've gone two months without a post. it's not for lack of trying, either. i think about posting something to the blog almost every day. but the fact of the matter is that i've been dealing with a monumental case of writer's block, and i've actually been kind of busy. writing about my life has taken a back seat to living it, and i think that's probably how it should be. however, living an unexamined life has never been one of my goals, and being self-aware is something i work on daily.

i keep reminding myself to look at the big picture. in fact, the phrase "big picture" has become my new mantra, the way "it is what it is" was the mantra a couple of years ago. sometimes, just saying "big picture" to myself is enough to stave off a crying fit, or make me laugh, or feel incredibly grateful. sometimes, "big picture" actually makes me want to barf. nevertheless, it's the mantra, for the moment, for better or worse.

this life is in a state of constant change and readjustment...people being born, people dying, people marrying, people divorcing, people moving closer or farther away. relationships are profoundly important, but the context in which we have them is important as well. sometimes, we all seem to be in the midst of readjustments, and it's hard to know where the hand-holds are. at least, that's how it's felt for me in the last month. change, like the tides, seems to rush in and rush back out, and i'm left picking through the debris on the shoreline, reminding myself that this little life and the little place i have in the universe is still here, even if the geography looks different than it did at Christmas, or my birthday. and it will look different all over again, in a few short weeks or months. that is life. this is my life. it's not meant to be static. that's why people painted epic moments on cave walls, on canvases, and take pictures now with digital cameras. because the movement is constant, and you don't need stephen hawking to tell you that to go back in time, you have to go back in space, too. and that, friends and neighbors, is pretty well impossible at this juncture.

i was driving home a couple of days ago, and looking at the wildflowers on the side of the road. i love wildflowers, and they are one of the reasons i moved back to texas almost ten years ago. one spring away from them was almost more than my sanity could bear. springtime is my favorite season...but i say that about all the seasons. this year, though, the colors seem to be shouting...the greens are greener, the blues are bluer, and the colors of the cows and sheep seem to sing a beautiful harmony that's unlike anything i've seen before. it's almost like seeing something for the first time.

i wonder if the ground hurts when the flowers begin to burst forth, the way a mother hurts when she brings a baby into the world? a precious and needful ache, an ache of completion and surrender and acceptance...a growing ache that has nothing and everything to do with loss and gain, of zero balance? in this life, birth is always a part of brokeness, and coming to terms with our pain, radically surrendering to it, breathing with it, and out of it is the only way we can really gain the big picture, i think.

maybe it's the spectre of holy week that has put me in the mind of loss being gain, in the shadow of the cross, and the long walk up the last hill. we live in a world of powerful opposites, of attractions and repulsions. and the more things change, the more they stay the same. God is good, all the time. God's ways are not my ways. God has nothing to do with fairness, only mercy and grace and love. for that, i am profoundly grateful.

mil besos,
rmg