Okay

I feel about as full today as I ever remember feeling. This afternoon as I drove home from yoga, I rolled down the windows and blasted Michael Franti as loud as I could stand it, singing at the top of my lungs. I flowed down the road, every thought, every breath a prayer. I felt free, really free. In those moments, I felt completely surrendered to the moment, loving as much as I knew how, accepting everyone and everything around me with as much heart as I could manage. This afternoon, there has been nothing to do, nothing to be, nothing to achieve, nothing more than feeling alive in the world. I grooved to the music, and offered my very being as prayer to the Earth I moved upon, and the beings I moved among. I was consumed in the joy of this beautiful afternoon, flowering trees dripping heavy with their finest splendor, and lush green bursting out everywhere.

This is the way of the world. Just when we think that death has claimed everything, when the cold, brutal winter will splinter everything in its icy grip, life persists. Life persists. I feel it all around me as the world flows back to its eternal living majesty. I also feel it within me, as I feel the tempestuous seas within me calming to some sense of peace.

I have knelt to greet the hyacinths and tulips, and have leaned over each day to meet the sweetness of the lilacs. I am beginning to know many of the plants around me now in all their seasons. I know where the poke berry plants will come up in the garden, and I know the mullein down the street, its soft, gray-green leaves already fully emerging. I know the trees all around me, though I don't have names for them all yet. I know their rhythm. I know the cycle of the magnolia tree, her shiny, rubbery leaves resilient through the winter, and her fragrant, leathery white blossoms giving way to brilliant red seed pods, then to hard brown cones. And I am starting to feel the rhythm of humanity within this cycle of nature here. My experience of the rhythm of seasons is surely different from those who live in close communion with the land and rely upon it for their sustenance. But I am understanding the energetic shifts that come with each time of the year.

I feel the roots of spring in me, digging down deep, looking for nourishment to blossom me wild and joyful and abundant and full of love. The summer sun will ripen my heart and mind and soul. I can't wait to see what life brings to me during this time. The winter was brutal and cold, and ravaged me. I am so ready to receive the seeds of life here, to welcome whatever life has to offer me. I have spent much of this day deeply bowing in gratitude, hardly able to contain the feeling I have - an almost overwhelming, ecstatic feeling. There will be another fall, and another winter. But now is the time to grow and fortify my heart. To embrace this ecstasy fully, to allow it to transform pain into wholeness, to transform fear into love, to transform doubt into trust and faith.

I have been waiting for there to come a time when life would once more feel like everything is really, really okay. Today is that day.