 It's the first of May, and here is a shower of flowers. Or in the case of most of them, flowers showing the effects of showers, after last night's rain. The one above, however, is from a sunny April day, when the redbud trees were at their peak. The rest were found in our backyard this afternoon, and in the case of the last two, we hope May flowers bring June blueberries.     
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 The tree branches are mostly bare now. The leaves have fallen -- on the ground, or held in a tree branch, or a faint echo in a sidewalk. Their shapes are twisted and torn, yet a few still manage to glow in the sunlight.       The stores all think it is the season to be jolly and practice retail therapy. Outdoors the picture is more unexpected. These photos are all from Goshen in the past two weeks -- with frost on the leaves and crabapple blooms seen on the same day, a bright red Japanese maple leaf a few days later, snow on the crabapple tree this past Sunday, a yellow iris just a couple days before that. And in the last photo, these wild turkeys seem to have a good grasp on exactly what week this is, as they run for cover!       This past week has been a hinge time, with the landscape shifting from the copper, gold and bronze of autumn to a dusting of white and dropping temperatures. Here's photos from a golden day before the fall, with the fireworks of milkweed seeds bursting from the pod, the patterns of branches and dried seedpods, the calligraphy of ivy, and a remaining touch of summer purple, side-by-side with a golden grass seedhead.      
I took my Windwatchers group down to the calendar garden this past Saturday, to do some beholding. The art of beholding is like this. "Behold" means to hold something in your gaze. To behold is not to stare or glance; it is not a quick scan or an expectant look. Beholding has a slow and spacious quality to it. . . . You release your expectations of what you think you will see and instead receive what is actually there. . . . Hold your camera in your hand and open yourself to grace and revelation hidden in each moment, just beneath the surface of what seems to be another ordinary moment. from Eyes of the Heart, by Christine Valters Paintner One can move into life with openness. It is as if one says to the world, and to life, and to one's self, and to God, "Surprise me!" This simple shift of attitude can make the difference between boredom and beauty. from Simply Sane, by Gerald May And there were surprises and beauty -- the many shapes and patterns of flowers and seeds, fall-blooming iris and Lenten rose, the delight and energy of four young boys finding the perfect race track in the circular shape of the garden. 
Spring is the bright white and gold of crocus pushing their way up through green pachysandra in a sheltered window well. Spring is also the muck and mess of dirty piles of snow slowly melting on a gray cloudy day. It's a path through woods that are still wintry gray and it's sun on last year's sunlit leaf hanging by this year's bud. It's the mud in the middle of the path and it's the new life tentatively emerging. 
 Notice the tracks in the snow on the bird bath. Just before the photo above, the cardinal hopped across the bird bath, stopping now and then with its head to one side, looking for all the world like he was thinking, "Wait, something is just not right here." Snow and cold weather continues. Birds at the feeder are a bright spot in the day. The flocks of house sparrows are commonplace, but still I am glad to see them finding shelter in the green branches of snow-capped yew bushes below my window on a snowy day, while the sight of cheery cardinal red or the black cap of a perky chickadee gives my spirits a lift.The spiral of terra cotta birds on our back porch don't need the birdfeeder, but they seem to be enjoying the warmth of early morning sunlight nonetheless.      
Tuesday was a typical northern Indiana, transition-into-winter day, one that could make you gloomy just looking out the window. Warm though, with a forecast for below-freezing temperatures the rest of the week, so I found time to go out with my camera. It took about half the walk, heading out from the house, to shed the writing project I had been working on. The scenery didn't help -- bare tree branches, gray skies, prairie plantings full of blackened, weedy stems. I didn't even bother pulling my camera out of my pocket. When I got to the southwest corner of campus, a couple little rusty-capped sparrows flew up from the grasses to take refuge in nearby bushes. They caught my wandering attention. I listened to them sing and started looking more closely at the weeds and grasses nearby. I found silver and gold, and evidence that the birds had been enjoying the banquet spread out before them. 
One early morning last week I walked into my spiritual direction room, ready to spend some time working on a retreat with the theme Tending the Fire. The sun was barely up and the room was shadowy, but the view out the window made me pause in delight. Overnight the leaves on the neighbor's tulip poplar tree had turned golden. It wasn't hard to find fiery fall light this past week, filling the leaves with glory. For some, even their veins seemed full of fire. 
Gray sky overhead, ebony water in the millrace, and muted bronzes, golds, reds, browns and grays all around, with the still water catching and holding reflections of the branches on the shore this November afternoon. And in a few spots, water and reeds holding the leaves themselves. 
Fall is here, hard as it is to believe that today, with the temperature hitting a high of 97. It may feel summer-hot, but we've made the turn into fall. Everything seems to be going to seed, or doing its best to soak up all the sunlight in can. Autumn is in the air -- and so are the geese. And harvestman and daddy longlegs are both delightful names for the same creature, which is not actually a spider, despite appearances. 
The spring equinox, so today we are standing on the threshold between fall/winter and spring/summer -- and today was a day that held glimpses of both. As I walked across campus this morning, I heard the soft cooing of a mourning dove, a forerunner of the summer days ahead. The sun slid between puffy clouds of gray, sending a welcome shaft of sunlight across the bare trees ahead of me -- and when I looked towards the east, I discovered a gauzy veil of dancing snowflakes. They were hardly visible when I looked west, except for an occasional large flake that caught the light. And then there was the windchill that took the temperature down into the teens. Huddled in my winter coat and scarf, I felt a kinship with these early purple crocuses, and their decision to stay furled this morning. In a south facing bed, the yellow and white crocus were cautious, but started to loosen up as the sun touched them, and later brought a welcome touch of golden light. 
The photo of the snowdrops is from a warmer day last week. I took it just in time -- they are pretty much done now. I wanted to commemorate my delight in their nearly two months of blooming, hidden again and again under snow and yet still standing. There's also a touch of summer in this photo. A bee scrambled headfirst into one of the blossoms and if you look closely, you may be able to spot where it's hiding. 
The view from our front steps is a prosaic one most of the time -- houses, trees, telephone poles, college buildings, a busy street or traffic backed up waiting for a train. The sky is still there though, and in recent days, the transition times have been full of color. This morning it was lavender and pink, turning the whole sky rosy. As I walked over to campus to meet my sister for our morning walk, the refrain from Fiddler on the Roof kept running through my head, quite in keeping with the seasonal metaphor I've been exploring the last while. Sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset, swiftly fly the years, One season following another, laden with happiness and tears. And with light and shadow, dark and light. And color. 
Ivy-covered walls and morning light and shadows....
Leafless ivy, wizened berries -- the seasons turn again.
Tuesday evening's sunset, looking west from our front yard -- glory in the midst of the ordinary, and hopes for a clear day to follow.
Palmer's seasonal metaphor for the inner journey flows from the new beginnings of scattered fall seeds, to winter dormancy, to the spring flowering of paradox, and so comes to summer's abundance. Summer is the season of abundance and first harvest. Having traced the seed of true self on its arduous journey from birth, through death and dormancy, into flowering, we can look at the abundance that has grown up within us and ask, “Whom is this meant to feed? Where am I called to give my gifts?” A Hidden Wholeness, p 83 Palmer cautions that the idealists among us ask these questions prematurely -- wanting to serve the world's needs, but burning out trying to do more than we are able. We need first to understand our true self -- the seeds planted in us, the deaths and dormancy, the new life, the fruit. To understand the true self, we need the interior intimacy that comes with solitude and we need the giving and taking, the listening and speaking, the being and doing that comes with community. I cannot give what I do not possess, so I need to know what gifts have grown up within me that are now ready to be harvested and shared. If the gifts I give are mine, grown from the seed of true self, I can give them without burning out. Like the fruit of a tree, they will replenish themselves in due season. A Hidden Wholeness, p 83 Abundance and harvest -- and then again the scattering of seeds, times of dormancy and paradox, and new growth. The seasons cycle, again and again. In his Circles of Trust, Palmer works with this seasonal metaphor representing a lifetime; his writing reveals the cycles of seasons occurring again and again in his own life. I shared this seasonal metaphor with a group of friends recently, and one exclaimed, with a sudden shock of recognition, "I'm out of season!" In her current seasonal cycle, she had assumed she was moving into a summertime of abundance and harvest, and instead found herself in an unexpected wintry dormancy, with glimmers of spring paradox. Outside my window, northern Indiana is moving into winter dormancy. In my interior world, I am living into a variety of spring paradoxes. What season are you in? 
Garden in early summer
At the Goshen Farmer's Market
An abundance of bees, enjoying an abundant harvest.
Snowdrop blossoms, coming up through old leaves and a layer of snow.
Palmer continues his seasonal metaphor for the inner journey by turning from winter's dormancy to the paradoxes of spring. Spring is the season of surprise when we realize once again that despite our perennial doubts, winter’s darkness yields to light and winter’s deaths give rise to new life. So one metaphor for spring is “the flowering of paradox.” As spring’s wonders arise from winter’s hardships, we are invited to reflect on the many “both-ands” we must hold to live fully and well – and to become more confident that as creatures embedded in nature, we know in our bones how to hold them. The deeper our faith, the more doubt we must endure; the deeper our hope, the more prone we are to despair; the deeper our love, the more pain its loss will bring; these are a few of the paradoxes we must hold as human beings. If we refuse to hold them in hopes of living without doubt, despair, and pain, we also find ourselves living without faith, hope, and love. But in the spring we are reminded that human nature, like nature herself, can hold opposites together as paradoxes, resulting in a more capacious and generous life. A Hidden Wholeness, p 82 - 3 
Above, a dead and decaying log -- filled with moss, lichen and tiny mushrooms. The close-up is below. 
New growth and a clematis bud, on last year's vine, and the remnants of a previous year's flower.
Silver maple keys and a Japanese maple seedling, on old bark chip mulch.
Dogwood blossoms, full of spring sunlight.
One seasonal metaphor for our life's journey begins with a childhood springtime, blossoms into youthful summer, transitions into a midlife autumnal harvest, and slowly fades into the wintry chill of old age.A lot of us find the journey more complicated than that, and that's another reason Parker Palmer's seasonal metaphor in A Hidden Wholeness caught my eye. He begins the cycle with fall as a time of new beginnings and the scattering of seeds -- very appropriate for someone working with educators! But then comes winter. The seeds of possibility planted with such hope in the fall must eventually endure winter, when the potentials we carried at birth appear to be dead and gone. As we look out upon the winter landscape of our lives, it seems clear that whatever was seeded in the fall is now buried deep in the snow, frozen over and winter killed. Many demoralized people recognize this “dead of winter” metaphor as an all-too-apt description of their bleak inner lives. Hidden Wholeness, p.82 
At some point in our journey, we encounter winter. Unexpected losses, disillusionment, discouragement, depression, anxiety, additctions...it can take many forms, and it can come more than once, leaving us feeling frozen and fenced in. Palmer himself came through a time of deep clinical depression, and knows that wintry feel well. Yet when we understand winter in the natural world, we realize that what we see out there is not death so much as dormancy. Some life has died, of course. But much of it has gone underground, into hibernation, awaiting a season of renewal and rebirth. So winter invites us to name whatever feels dead in us, to wonder whether it might in fact be dormant – and to ask how we can help it, and ourselves, “winter through.” Hidden Wholeness, p 82. 
(And just in case anyone is wondering, these photos are from last winter. There a a few small flakes flying as I write this, but full-fledged winter has not yet arrived in northern Indiana.)
These past few weeks I've been fascinated by the variety of seed shapes and seed carriers I've found in the prairie plantings on campus. Perhaps that's why my attention was caught by Parker Palmer's seasonal metaphor in A Hidden Wholeness, his book about his work with circles of trust. Usually when I think of new beginnings and seeds, I think of spring. But Palmer begins with fall when he develops a seasonal cycle as a metaphor for what happens in the inner journey of discovery. "We often start our groups in the fall, a time when work begins again for many people, following a summer break--and nature begins her work again by dropping and scattering seeds. In this season of new beginnings, a circle of trust might inquire into the 'seed of true self.' What seed was planted when you or I arrived on earth with our identities intact? How can we recall and reclaim those birthright gifts and potentials?" p. 81 Here's a few photos of seeds about to be dropped and scattered, for you to muse on as you ponder your own seeds and new beginnings. 
The sun was still highlighting the maple trees on 8th Street during the last half of our walk Sunday evening. We walked along Waverly, crunching leaves under our feet and smelling that leafy, autumn smell, along with an aroma of charcoal and grilled hot dogs wafting our way from somewhere in the neighborhood. There was a slight nip in the air -- felt like we should be on our way to a soccer game. Instead we watched squirrel antics and enjoyed the golden glory of the leaves. 
It was a rainy weekend for the annual Assembly retreat at Camp Friedenswald, but a group of us were able to explore the woods with Carol Good-Elliott Saturday morning, before the showers started. We ambled along, stopping to examine the diversity of shapes on sassafras trees (oval, Michigan shaped, and two thumbed), the rich purple of squashed pokeweed berries, the golden eyes of a tiny spring peeper. Carol had us using all our senses, tasting anise-y sweet cicely, listening for woodpeckers and warblers, rubbing our fingers over the raised ridges of papery beech leaves,.and sniffing spicebush and sassafras leaves (which, according to the grade school children who visit Merrylea where Carol works, smell like Lucky Charms. We went with "lemony, " or to at least one person, "Lemon Pledge"). And even with a gray damp day, and lots of brown leaves around, there were plenty of colorful leaves to admire. 
I began this practice of looking for the spark of light each day and then posting photos just over a year ago. We were traveling when the anniversary came round, so this is a belated noting of that marker. I continue to look for the spark of light or delight in each day, but I seem to have settled into a pattern of heading out for a longer session with my camera about once a week and then drawing on that resource to create a couple posts for the week. The cycle of seasons has now come full circle. Once again we are moving into the colder time of year here in North America, which may mean I'll occasionally do my search for light by looking back through the trove of photos that I've gathered this past year, rather than venturing outdoors. On the other hand, even the coldest winter has some warmer days. We'll just have to see what happens. And for today, commemorating the past year and its seasons, I've gone back to that trove, selecting images from this past year into a slideshow to share here.  We had our first frost the night before last, so yesterday we woke to a frost covered yard. The rest of the day was clear and sunny, so mid-afternoon I wandered over to the prairie plantings on campus to see how things were doing. There is quite a mix of flowers gone to seed and flowers still opening blooms.  I was examining some seed heads when two grade school children from a nearby house waded through the plantings to see what I was doing. They were friendly and curious, so we talked about the prairie plants for awhile before the brother headed back to their swing set. His sister stayed and watched. I was trying to get a photo of a big brown grasshopper, but it kept leaping away. She tried to catch it for me and told me about finding little green grasshoppers in the field earlier. I told her that this one might be one of those -- that they get bigger and browner as they get older. She nodded and thought about the way things change color as they get older. "Like grandmas!" she said, looking at my white hair with a big smile. "Like grandmas," I agreed, though I'm not one yet. Grandmas and grasshoppers and all things grow and change. This past week we slipped from summer into autumn, and the trees are beginning to turn vibrant colors, and the smaller plants are turning brown. Or white, like grandmas. Either way, there is an abundance of seeds, so the cycle of growth and change will continue. To everything .....turn, turn, turn...... There is a season.....turn, turn, turn.... And a time to every purpose, under heaven.   The new and the old -- more purple coneflowers 
When Beth and Jesse got married last year, they wanted lots of colorful summer flowers for their decorations. I planted sunflowers, and we knew there would be black-eyed susans, queen anne's lace and other roadside flowers. Several friends allowed us to sow seeds in their gardens in various locations around town, which we figured increased our chances that some would be in bloom when we needed them. Our plans worked well, and there were bucket-loads of colorful flowers to put in pint jars for table decorations. This included lots of bright zinnias. I had never been very interested in zinnias. They always seemed stiff and rather boring, and I generally have preferred perennials to annuals. But last summer I realized zinnias did a good job of bringing color to the late summer garden, and this year I planted zinnia seeds. And I've discovered that zinnias are not only full of color -- if you take a close look, they are downright zany. 
Sunday I read the following passage, part of a canticle by Thomas Merton in A Book of Hours, edited by Kathleen Deignan, and it resonated with the fiery light of sunlight flowers I encountered that morning. For, like a grain of fire Smouldering in the heart of every living essence God plants His undivided power-- Buries His thought too vast for worlds In seed and root and blade and flower, 
Until, in the amazing shadowlights Surcharging the religious silence of the spring Creation finds the pressure of its everlasting secret Too terrible to bear. Then every way we look, lo! rocks and trees Pastures and hills and streams and birds and firmament And our own souls within us flash, and shower us with light, While the wild countryside, unknown, unvisited Bears sheaves of clean, transforming fire. 
And then, oh then the written image, schooled in sacrifice, The deep united threeness printed in our deepest being, Shot by the brilliant syllable of such an intuition, turns within, And plants that light far down into the heart of darkness and oblivion And plunges after to discover flame. Book of Hours, p 49 -50. 
On our way home from the retreat last Sunday, Sandy and i stopped in at the Calendar Garden to check up on the spring flowers and frogs. The Spring sector was in full bloom, with candy tuft in pink and white, iris, and drifts of pinks about to open. And some petite pale purple poppies, with stamen looking like miniscule polliwogs. 
And then there were the real polliwogs. A lovely word for tadpole, in case you don't recognize it. I just discovered that it comes from Middle English for poll = head, plus wiglen = wiggle. And that's exactly what they do -- those little whiptails wiggle them through the water, though you can't see them in action in this photo of tadpoles and lilly pads. 
There were several bullfrogs sunning themselves in the pond. At one point I thought I heard a dog barking in the distance, and then realized it was the frogs, sounding like they had laryngitis. One apparently decided to incorporate the spring flower theme into his personal attire. 
The ups and downs of spring.... for several days Judy and I watched a robin working on this nest in a tree between the College Church parking lot and the bike path. It didn't strike us as the safest or quietest place to raise a family. Apparently the robin decided the same thing, leaving behind this high quality nest for anyone interested. The ups and downs of April temperatures have kept us busy, covering and uncovering the strawberries and blueberries, but even without any protection, the miniature rose is putting out tiny rosebuds. (I haven't cropped this one as tightly as I might, to give you an idea of the size of the plant -- about six inches). 
Our backyard is full of exclamation points, thanks to the neighbor's silver maple. It's great fun to watch them whirling their way down, but while we are hopeful that all the blueberry blossoms result in fruit, we are definitely hoping that these seeds are not so prolific. Most of the yard looks like this little patch: 
 The Japanese maple is not nearly so prolific, but there are 3 or 4 little seedlings coming up nearby. Pretty tiny, as you can see by the maple seed, but we're hoping these survive.
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My approach to contemplative photography --
"Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it." Mary Oliver in "Sometimes" Categories
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