How it works

Daily Devotion - May 2

I will send a brief message each day (except Mondays)
while we are pausing gathering in person.
- Kara

Today is a perfect Minnesota Spring day.  The grass is electric green, the sun is warm, and the air feels like it's holding you.  On our walk, Andy commented on this phenomenon in Minnesota - where our world goes so all in with each season that, just a few weeks apart, you can't even remember what it felt like to be in the last season. 

Right now, to even imagine being a locked in the bitter, icy, snow-muzzled, dead of winter feels like a foreign country or a distant memory.  And it's so glorious outside it's hard to anticipate the inevitable muggy, mosquito-laden heat of summer just around the corner.  Today is so completely and fully Spring, there is no alternative for our mind or body to even contemplate.  

We Minnesotans are used to being in the present moment - fully in whatever is now, at least as far as the environment around us is concerned.  

My daughter and I set up her fairy garden today. (We are waiting for the white stones to come in the mail that she will use to make paths).  But the setting up of the fairy garden is our active participation in the arrival of Spring - a sure marker for us of moving from one reality- one season - to the next. (Now I need only to hang all the winter coats in the basement closet and finally put away the boots and it will be official).

As we wandered the beauty of the earth on our many walks this day, we were also finding the grief come up again at the canceled Spring plans and unknown Summer plans, and tried to be gentle with ourselves about it.  

It has been 47 days since we started this Quarantine in our house.  A whole season, it feels like.  It's hard to even remember or relate to what life was like before.  But in the today, we are living just fine.  We are weathering what comes and we are surviving.  We are finding pockets of peace and moments of joy, and it is life, just like life is always life.   

Here's what life as a Minnesota has taught me:  Feeling like this is all there is is part of the deal.  But that doesn't make it true.  It just makes it real.  And when the next season arrives, this will feel like a distant memory or a foreign land, hard to even conjure up in our imaginations, so real will be the next thing. Because that's how it works.

So, Happy Spring, and a Blessed Quarantine to you.


CONNECTING RITUAL:
Perhaps tonight at bedtime, whenever that is in each of our homes, we might pray in this way and so join our hearts.

Let's take up the Evening Prayer again...

Lord it is night.
The night is for stillness.
Let us be still in the presence of God.

It is night after a long day.
What has been done has been done;
what has not been done has not been done.
Let it be.

The night is dark.
Let our fears of the darkness
of the world and of our own lives
rest in you.

The night is quiet.
Let the quietness of your peace enfold us,
all dear to us, and all who have no peace.

The night heralds the dawn.
Let us look expectantly to a new day,
new joys, new possibilities.
In your name we pray.
Amen.

- New Zealand Prayerbook