Spring and Gift

It’s spring, and I can hardly believe it.  

My hat comes off with a cartoon exclamation point.  I shed my vest. I walk a little straighter because I don’t have to hunch against winter’s bullying wind.  Birds are chirp-chirruping. That yellow is a daffodil’s coy smile.

Spring is a gift that, like anything else, I have to learn to receive.  It’s so easily forget that to be alive is to be the beneficiary of a whole line of giftedness slacking back into history’s dark waters.  We lose our frank ability to receive the gift. We think in terms of defense. We’ve got things to do. Stick to the budget. Work, work, work.  

And then spring parks outside without asking and robins tumble into the garden.  Can we receive it, breathe it, just be in it–without expecting anything more from the moment?

Sometimes, loss will catch us up short and help awaken us to the giftedness of our reality.  Someone dies or moves or a set of circumstances that were good for us are just puff. Then what?  There’s mourning. That has to happen. But moments of loss can lead to awareness. Sometimes, we learn to just receive the day.

I think this is what people mean when they talk about finding peace.  Those of us who are driven–by false motives or true–can struggle to find this peace, because the gift of the moment becomes fodder for the next thing.

Spring has ways of reminding us that life is worth a pause.  It’s worth a breath. We are more than what we can accomplish with the string of moments given us.  Those moments are gifts anyway, and our preciousness comes by recognizing that they–and we–come from the hand of the Giver.