Buddings

This time of year – this move from winter to spring – is one that always seems to touch deep.  It echos and reverberates my whole being, body, mind, and soul.  The musings and feelings that have been occupying space in me lately I don’t believe are coincedence, they are tied tightly to the changing seasons, both of creation and of the spiritual.

One of the increasingly powerful things that I have put into practice in my life over the last handful of years is the practice of lent.  I think every year that I have participated in this it has shocked me in what I experience, in the journey of emotions and life that I feel.  This whole year has been quite a journey and now that its nearing its end I am filled with those closing emotions, ending feelings….the seasonal ends.

I was shocked this summer returning from Korea and moving here because I assumed I would be experiencing those “big changes in your life” kind of feelings.  The end of something and the beginning of something different.  All summer I waited for the arrival of those feelings…..they never came.  Once I arrived here I thought , surely they’ll come now…..they never came.  Even being in this city – it wasn’t new and foreign – it felt like a returning.  Thinking about this over the summer made me realize that coming to study here felt like a continuation of what the Spirit was doing in me while in Korea, that the journey just happened to take place in two different locations.  Some days this place is stunningly similar to Korea; at times I feel it so strongly that I’d walk into stores and speak my broken poor ’survival’ Korean out of habit and then looking at the stunned face on the other side of the counter, shocked at their silence and I’d finally hear — “pardon?”.

This ending of lent approaching, this coming of spring, this leaving winter and welcoming spring feels like a true ending.  I feel like I am saying goodbye to Korea finally.  I am daily shocked at how “at home” I was in Korea…some days it haunts me… so the goodbye feeling sort of sits like a rock in my gut, always present, profoundly sad because its an ending……

….but spring is on the horizon and things are budding, not just on the trees and in the bushes but I feel them in my spirit, and they make me smile.

…..what’s budding in your life this season?

My heart is waiting
Inside its fading
and the leaves won’t stop falling

The days grow shorter
Nights are longer
And winter wraps around me

You said
“wait child, I’m in love with you
Its a solemn vow, I’ll come back for you”

My heart is waiting
Inside its fading
And the leaves won’t stop falling

The days grow shorter
Nights are longer
Winter wraps around me

You said,
“Wait child, I’m in love you,
Its a solemn vow, I’ll come back for you
Wait child, I’m in love with you…”

He will come, surely as the sun bursts forth into light.
He will come, until then I will keep my lamp burning bright
He will come, He will come.

“Wait child, I’m in love with you
Its a solemn vow, I’ll come back for you”

-Karla Adolphe “He will come”