March 5^th, 2014

“The LORD will guide you continually,

and satisfy your needs in parched places,

and make your bones strong;

and you shall be like a watered garden,

like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.”

-Isaiah 58:11

Today begins the 40 days of preparation for Easter; a time to reflection, a time for making a change, a time for walking with Jesus in the desert.  Today we put on ashes as a way of expressing sorrow for wrongdoings, of penitence for our sinful ways. 

But at my birdfeeder cardinals, blue jays, mourning doves, and sparrows all sing a different song than the one they sang last week.  Somehow they seem to know that spring is not far off and their tune is more cheerful, more full of hope than it was just days ago. 

The trees, too, are releasing the sap that was once carefully guarded deep in the deepest parts of the roots.  Sweetness flows to the surface in preparation for the unfurling of leaves. 

This paradox of sweet and melancholy held at the same time is, for me, much a part of this end of winter, this precipice of the springtime world.   My body is ready to leap and frolic and yet my mind is trying to wrap itself around the defects that prevent me from full stature. 

Last week, taking a break from collecting bucket after bucket of maple sap, I lay in the snow and listened.  I imagined I heard the sap flowing from deep in the earth.  Up and up and up.  Nourishing the sleepy trees.  Preparing them for photosynthesis, for new life.  It is the deepest, sweetest joy I know. 

- Ellyn Siftar