In North Carolina, my sister is getting her garden ready for planting. My cousin in Virgina posted photos of her Lenten rose weeks ago. Here in Indiana, I'm beginning to believe that spring is just around the corner.

We celebrated today's sunshine and our daughter's visit by going out to DeFries Calendar Garden this afternoon, and enjoyed glimpsing spring -- green leaves beginning to open on a few eager bushes, Lenten roses, swelling buds, the sweet scent of witch hazel pompons, an exuberance of pussywillow in the greenhouse, and mysterious colorful blooms.

For the past couple years I've had a picture/poem posted on my bulletin board, one John wrote and gave me for Epiphany 2009. It's a little hard to read there, with white print on a picture of evening sun on icy branches (the one above). For some reason I took it down the other day and re-read it.

He pulled together a number of threads from our experiences in 2008 -- if you check my 11-19 post, you can read my poem on the episode with the seagulls. We were both surprised to discover threads that had no source in 2008, but that resonate with strands of our lives today, including this blog (see section 4).

Becoming    -- by John Glick
1.
A band of sun-fire
Pierces dark December clouds
Illuminating.

One by one seagulls
Enter the light, winging southward,
Each bearing a prayer.

On and on they come
Transfixed I stand; thank God for
Serendipity.

2.
Flame's way focuses the mind;
A candle,
A campfire,
A raging California hillside.

On this day of the longest night,
When a father wonders if he'll have a job next month,
When a mother's doctor tells her she has cancer,
When a family huddles in the cold because
        they could not pay the utility bill,
We yearn for the light.
We yearn for God's light,
Like watchmen ache for the dawn.

Flame of love also
Focuses the mind, on
A child,
A friend,
A community.

3.
When deep comes darkness,
Your love, O Lord, is a fire,
Turning, transforming.

You who walk with us
Our hearts burn within; we Know
When You break the bread.

Ah, the flame within;
First it kindles, then ignites
Mind, body, soul.

4.
Shadows are the evidence of light,
Both the giver and the receiver,
A shadow speaks the language of
Shape, intensity and movement.

Evening settles;
Sipping tea my heart drinks in
Trees a-fire with sun.

They stretch their fingers
Towards heaven, inviting
"You too can be fire!"

Used with permission. All rights reserved.

Yesterday morning I checked the front flower bed for my baby siberian iris, since they usually come up soon after the crocus start blooming. There were green spikes of leaves, but no sign of buds. I looked out late in the afternoon and whoosh! -- they'd come up and bloomed.

Crossing the campus this morning, I couldn't tell if the sun was up by looking at the sky -- it was covered with thick rain clouds. But there was a chorus of birds to welcome it anyway, including some plumped-up robins. The rain spattered against my umbrella and the air was full of the scent of pine and wet earth. Ahhh...breathe deeply.

Muddy March, I thought, but not yet spring -- there aren't any earthworms on the sidewalk. That was on the way to the Rec-Fitness Center. By the time I headed home, I had to watch my step to avoid stepping on them. It's that transitional, who-knows-what's-going-to-happen season. Just after that I saw a flock of penguins.

Okay, so it was just the GC men's choir -- young men in black and white, flocking towards a tour bus near the music building, pillows under their arms, ready for anything. Maybe even a trip to the Pole.

I've been wondering whether it might be possible to track temperature changes by the effects on spring flowers. Under 50 degrees the crocus and snowdrops stay tightly furled. This afternoon the temps shot up above 60.

I went out looking for shadows this afternoon, having shadows on my mind after reading some of Richard Rohr's thoughts on the "shadowlands."

He's talking about humans' shadow sides -- the part of us that we don't want to see, the part that is unacceptable to us due to "nature, nurture, and choice."  He talks of the story of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32) and the publican and the Pharisee (LUke 18:9-14). In each case, the point is not that they were perfect people, but that they were honest about their wrong-doing. They faced up to it and named it.

"How have we been able to miss that important point? I suspect it is because the ego wants to think well of itself and deny any shadow material. Only the soul knows we grow best in the shadowlands. We are blinded inside of either total light or total darkness, but “the light shines on inside the darkness, and it is a light that darkness cannot overcome” (John 1:5). Ironically, it is in darkness that we find and ever long for more light. Did you know that even physics is now telling us that what looks like total darkness to the human eye is actually filled with neutrinos, which are light? Again, the mystics like John of the Cross knew this to be true on the spiritual level too."

(this is from Rohr's daily meditation website -- it's a somewhat expanded version of a quote from his Breathing Under Water, p 33).

Rohr calls us to "honest shadow boxing" -- making a "searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves," as step 4 of the Twelve Steps says.

"The more you are attached to any persona ("stage mask" in Greek) whatsoever, bad or good, any chosen and preferred self-image, the more shadow self you will have. So we absolutely need conflicts, relationship difficulties, moral failures, defeats to our grandiosity, even seeming enemies, or we will have no way to ever spot or track our shadow self. They are our necessary mirrors. Isn't that sort of a surprise? And even then, we usually catch it out of a corner of our eye -- in a graced insight and gifted moment of inner freedom."  (Breathing Under Water, 33 -34.)

A good awareness to be pondering during Lent, along side texts like those I worked with for Lent 1.

This isn't the shadowlands that Rohr has in mind, but I found the layers intriguing.

Some memories of sunlight and the warm wind from yesterday afternoon at Witmer Woods. . . a flock of red-wing blackbirds was feasting on the berries, but they didn't stay around for the photo op.

Back at home the sunshine was streaming in...













. . .making for interesting mixtures of light and shadow.