Things are starting to turn green. There is still a lot of brown going on, but the green is definitely on the increase. There is transition in the air, in the plants, in the soil, in the crazy spring-feverish cats, in our lives and in the lives of a lot of my friends. Sometimes I feel a deep longing in my soul, a craving for more of something, but what that something is, I cannot tell. I felt it again last week. I have mistaken this sensation for loneliness, for hunger, for fatigue, for failure, and many times for emotional instability. But it is none of those, at least not primarily. At the core of my personality is this insatiable desire to experience life in a deep and profound manner, in spirit and soul and body. When I see all of nature straining towards rebirth as it does every spring, it awakens my own longings.
There must be more to this life than what I am doing at the present time. My relationships must go deeper or become broader or both. I must give myself more fully to the moment I find myself in. I must find time to call forth and harness the sounds and images and words all lying dormant inside my wintery soul. I must sprint and jump high and dance wildly in a field just because I can, and when I don't, I feel small and stiff and somehow wilting. I must interact with God more often, loudly and silently and without hesitation, hoping and waiting for those times when my whole being engages and flutters with a supernatural, bigger than me, vibe. I must love Dean and my closest friends, my family and acquaintances and the strangers I encounter, with a love that is much wilder and more extravagant and superfluous than I can manage. I must wring every drop of life and learning from every experience or I will have wasted the gift of time.
I am undone by these overwhelming pangs sometimes. Years ago, I used to retreat to a private room and weep until the waves of agony and emptiness had mostly subsided. These days, I weep less because I have found healthier ways to release the tension and fight the isolation.
I don't believe these longings will ever totally cease in my life because they express the gap between who I am and who I am meant to be. There is an incredible distance between me and God, between me and others, between war and peace, between disaster and wholeness, between love and ignorance, between sowing and reaping, between knowing good and doing good, between life and death, between now and the not yet.
Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens. All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it's not only around us; it's within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We're also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. - from Romans 8 in The Message
These are some tiny leaves on a bush in my back yard today.
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