The joke in Montana was that the season go:
summer, fall, winter, spring, winter, spring,
winter, spring…
One year it snowed in June, heavy. Leaves were out;
we’d been mowing lawns for a month.
Trees and branches fell under the weight.
We stood in the street assessing the damage
when up popped the neighbor’s automatic sprinklers,
faithfully watering eight inches of snow.
There are frogs whose blood chemistry enables them
to freeze solid in the winter. In the spring they thaw out
and carry on as before. They can freeze and thaw
multiple times in one season.
The seasons of the soul don’t progress smoothly,
or even always forward. Sometimes winter follows spring.
When your secret life is dark and cold,
when prayer has become strangely pointless
and God, once warm and near, is now a sheet of ice,
fear not. This happens.
The Mysterious One is not absent;
the world hasn’t slipped on its axis;
there’s nothing wrong with you.
The little frog of your soul has gone into hibernation,
waiting for a season only it knows.
God is right there, frozen solid with you.
Be patient. Look for little bits of love and beauty.
Don’t expect a warm spring sunrise. Just little bits.
In time your inner frog will thaw out and once again
you’ll hear its warbly little song.
______________
Weather Report
Unseasonable;
expect violent thunderstorms,
warm zephyrs and hard freezes
in no particular order.
Be prepared to enjoy, or shelter in place.
Conditions will pass,
but the Invisible One will abide.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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