Aries Season
Green tips breaking earth. Frost turning to warm afternoons. Open all the windows. Clear the clutter, reclaim the natural world. Weird, cause as I look around I see honeysuckle and crocus and bursts of magnolia blooms, just as I have many spring times before, yet this one FEELS inherently different. Spring is always fresh and new, being that it kicks off another astrological year with the bold pioneering innocence of Aries. There is no other way to feel but renewed, a strong sense of promise and carried scent of floral will uplift any downtrodden soul to a better way.
COVID-19
But I’m sure, like many others feel it too, this season is different in away. It is a weird time right now. Do we go outside, or do we stay in? We want to see others because naturally this is the time where we feel compelled by a Will greater than our own to do just that. Days are longer and spent among the new budding foliage. But now, the state of the world is uncertain. It is a time when the only certainty we do have is that seasons will change and time marches on.
Nature is Our Teacher
We are reminded of that through nature. March, of all the months, is probably the most fickle. Never predictable, will it snow or will it rain? Will the wind gust you down or will the sun beam your cheeks rosy? Though, at the end of that uncertainty, there is always something new to beholden. A greater sum than that of what was lost.
This season, we need to look around as it begins to unfold and see just what is being “renewed”.
Earth
The earth will be renewed. The earth will gain more stewards, and protectors and worshipers of all kinds. The earth will be given a rest, while the citizens will scramble resulting in the need to find renewed ways to take less and return more. We are taking a real stern look at what we consider a necessity and how we can change our over usage or maybe even unwarranted ways of constant consuming.
Community
Community will change. The ways to practice friendship and kinship will be reviewed and renewed, finding a new ability to reach out and be there for someone even if you can’t physically be in their presence. Less informal than a text and more friendly, like a video chat, a smiling face, both as simple as a click, but now we know the latter is more joy-filled and less misunderstood.
Self-Awareness
A renewed sense of “down time”. Oh, what time to spend! Alone? ..never alone if you are truly WITH yourself. There are so many ways to be with one’s self, in solitude, in mediation, in streamlines and messy piles of creativity. In loud doses of music or sweeping dense silence. Before we had a renewed sense maybe we’d think we didn’t desire to be alone with ourselves but after our required distance we fell in love with both ourselves and each other, again or maybe for the first time, yet either way, it was necessary for society in ways we could not foresee until now.
Resistance
Many are not happy to be forced to stop work or to slow down or to distance. So much of this is met with resistance for the fear of lack. That we don’t have enough. Enough money, enough resources, enough toilet paper! These are secondary problems, problems that will only be exacerbated if you don’t have health. So we must preserve health and take care of each other, if even from a distance.
I didn't want to teach art virtually from home, away from my students without them having a single supply. I didn't want all of my events and workshops I was SO stoked to launch be postponed. I didn't want to see my best friend cry when she had to figure out how to reschedule her wedding, I didn't want to sit on my parent's back deck talking to my sick father through the sliding glass door. I worry for the people I know who work in hospitality, I worry for the medical community and the nurses. But now, knee deep in this, I see that "there is something happening here" like the Buffalo Springfield song. It is an awakening of sorts, a chance to renew what we have and reset our future.
Showers to Flowers
So you see, in this time of natural renewal, the lesson was always there, with nature being the teacher. It wasn’t until we were forced to slow down and “smell the magnolias” that we got to truly experience what the lesson was waiting to renew inside of us.
What did you find renewed inside of yourself this Spring?
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