The blossoms are doing their pink popcorn magic and spreading poofy joy all around Vancouver...and really, is there any kind of joy better than poofy joy?
We are all perfectly aware that Life is not always filled with cherry blossoms that waft the scent of Angel food cake in sweetly-scented clouds.
Nope.
Sometimes life feels like the darkest of November’s dreariest days. The kind of days that drizzle cold grey rain down the back of my neck. The kind of days that don’t seem worth meeting even halfway. Sometimes life feels too bleak to bother with. Sometimes it doesn’t seem like Spring will ever come.
The beauty of having faith in life is that – in spite of how I feel – I can hang on to hope. In fact, I think faith is the embodiment of hope. It is also trusting that there might be a different possibility, that perhaps there’s something beautiful and pinkly-positive waiting around the next corner.
It is, at the very least, knowing that there might be more than I am privvy to knowing right at this particular moment. In that way, faith is humbling. Because…guess what? Apparently I don’t already know all the answers.
Who could have possibly guessed that??
Faith is trusting and being curious in what might be. Faith is holding on when it doesn’t feel like there’s anything worth holding on to. Faith is trusting in the process that everything is about learning. Faith is about remaining open to what might be and not thinking I have to know how things should be.
Faith feels like a hanging on. And. One day Spring explodes in all her poofy-pinkness and it’s not about hanging on any more, but more about letting go and whooping it up at the beauteous bounty that is bursting out of every tree.
Julian of Norwich was already onto this idea of hanging in there when things weren’t necessarily working. She wrote something that would make a great bumper sticker (albeit a tad on the longish side…perhaps it would need to cover the entire bumper?)
Bumper sticker logistics aside, it bears repeating throughout the day, and most especially during the grimmest of those metaphorical and literal rainy nights. She said,
“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
She knew.
She knew that eventually the trees would bloom; fleeting and fantastic.
She knew we just need to keep the faith.
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Thanks for the link!
Thank you!
This comes at just the right moment, when I am being reminded everywhere to have faith that all shall be well – or at the very least, everything is as it should be, despite momentary panics and occasional lonesome-ness. Though how anyone can be lonesome with a pug whining at their feet, I don’t know!
“Despite momentary panics..” Yes. That is definitely when this little mantra is very helpful indeed.
I finally finished the 100-year old man who stepped out of the window and disappeared,” and though it was basically just a very light-hearted frolic, it also held a message to take a bit of a 100-year view of one’s life; to step back and know that everything has its time, and then, it too doth pass! The trick is not to attach to a particular outcome. And quite a trick that is!
Keep petting that pug 🙂