"…we don't love like the flowers, all in a/ single year; for us, when we love, immemorial/ sap rises into our arms." Rilke

   Mid winter, flowers hide in their usual places. In their season their beauty will rise like an ocean wave leaping for the sun.

   The flower cannot renew itself. Our love can.

   In the leaden hours when longing floods our hearts we can remember that hope lives in Love's embrace.

   In our flattest moments we can yet sense the "immemorial sap" waiting to be summoned.

   But, amid exhaustion and disappointment, it's easier to retreat into indifference. 

   All that matters is Love. But, living Love can hurt us into exhaustion and bloody us into retreat.

   I hate to be reminded when I'm acting unloving because I know that that charge is usually true. My lawyer's habit is to rush to my defense. It's so painful to yield to Love's truth rather than fight it.

   The flowers live worry-free. The iris touches her hands together to pray to the sun and to thank the raindrops. The light illuminates her swirls and curves and colors and reveals some of the intricacy of her complex beauty.

   She has texture and taste and scent. All of it flows effortlessly through her veins.

   We have to try.

   Or maybe we don't.

   The hardest lesson I've learned is the most obvious one: My worst moods will pass. When my soul loses its way in the dark I imagine I will be trapped forever unless I lunge up some hill and return with a shadow-killing flame.  

   But the light is never at the top of the hill.  

   During a gray moment last autumn, I went into the woods, laid back on the grass and, amid my gloom, was startled to discover a stained glass window carved into the sky.

   The ground became a church pew. There I began to worship the gifts of the heavens – the ones that are always there.

-Erie Chapman