Right this minute the violets and daffodils are rising through their greenness, the piglets are frolicking and finding their own way in the barnyard and the promise of Spring rises with the sun each day. March is the trickster month around here; from snow to sunbathing naked, buds preparing to open then freezing temps—predictability and coherence (like the kind we hopefully had in our winter rhythms) is not the gift of Spring. As in Autumn our souls prepared for the darkness and stillness of Winter, so now our souls prepare for chaos and action of Summer…but first, connection dear people, first connection.
Leave your dens, your nests, slowly, imitate the smallest, most freshly-born things; rise slowly, do not rush, seek what you need with fervor but not greed…budding and blooming too fast, grabbing and grasping, as humans are inclined to do, often creates instability or destruction in our own systems or our collective environments. Stay at earth-speed, move with great care, commit to trusting the organic unfoldment of Life itself–which is infinitely more trustworthy than our thoughts– no matter what your brain or culture seem to be telling you to the contrary.
Woven into and through the promise of Spring, I also feel a level of despair moving in us all, a despair we keep at bay as we enjoy sunny days and the hope of Spring…the little-big things like the fact that the robins didn’t come through by the thousands this year or that my view of the lake below us should be full to bursting with water but lies almost empty–that where there should be fullness and flow there is only trickle.
I want to speak about hope and possibility and stimulate your lightheartedness yet I must also name these sources of despair and fear, the things we can push away, not see, not attend to…but must not.
If I leave out the horror, I am supporting our blindess*, our ignorance, and our dangerous collective weakness around tolerating the intolerable—I believe tolerating the intolerable must become a core discipline as a way of staying awake and navigating the waters we are in.
Hope and possibility can be tools for health. They can also be tools for ignorance and each of us must choose, every day, what to pay attention to.
Please, pay attention to everything you can allowing a full array—from stunning beauty to the horror you think you cannot bear.
Please, take back your ability to pay attention—put down your phones, put down your to-do list, put down your calls to perfection that keep you working mercilessly—inner work, outer work, still work, still a oftentimes-violent and relentless demand that the soul cannot rise to without rest and pleasure and play.
Rest, play, take pleasure where you can find it AND, build the resource and courage to attend to what is horrifying, terrifying, unbearable too.
*one of our piglets is blind. She is the runt and such a vulnerable creature AND she is finding her way, but slowly. Keeping our vulnerabilities in front of us, like blindness, can support a more integrous walk…maybe imitating Hazel the piglet is a wise way forward.
XX
Lexi Delgado
P.S. If you are inspired to read more of my writings, you can find them here https://lexidelgado.com/writings/