The ice is almost completely melted now where I live, and many birds are singing in the morning, loudly and all at once. It sounds and smells like spring. As we are being vaccinated and feeling safer to interact in person, it's like we're all coming out of a year-long hibernation of sorts. Often we think of change as being difficult but sometimes, like in springtime, it can be a softening, a warming, a welcome surprise. We can take advantage of an opportunity to stop worrying about slipping on the ice and relax into the soft and sometimes muddy earth.
I have been reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead recently, and am struck by the emphasis placed on the way that we perceive our world. A pure mind and heart have pure perception--in other words, the faults we see in others are the faults that lie within ourselves, and these are the faults that shape the faulty world as we experience it. Jesus taught the same thing: "First take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye." There may be some value in asking what is within us that makes us fear change, distrust or find people annoying, or obsess about a dystopian future. How much can we soften, open and welcome the coming spring within and around us?
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