Awesome!

Willing to be Dazzled

“…Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled---
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing---
that the light is everything---that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.
Mary Oliver (From “The Ponds”)

I don’t know about you, but springtime after a long, dreary winter can still dazzle the socks off me. I’m just as much in awe of its outrageous blooming and bursting out in glorious color as I was at ten. Just when I get to the point of thinking the whole world is bound for hell, and there’s nothing worth saving, and we all may just as well give up, spring happens, and I go soaring away on the fair winds of hope--again. I wonder if you feel that way, too. I can’t imagine a worse fate than not being wowed by the sheer beauty and abundance of nature in its season of fertility.

I was nine years old the first time I saw the ocean. My grandparents, Mama and Papa Richardson, came to Morganton and picked up my sister, Jerrie, and me, and we drove to Myrtle Beach, SC. At that time, Myrtle Beach was a little village with no condos or high-rise hotels. I told them on the drive down that if the ocean scared me, I was going to blindfold myself and jump in anyway. When we drove up to the Boardwalk and I got my first look at the surging Atlantic, I told Mama, “I think I’m going to need that blindfold.” I was simply overwhelmed by the vastness of the ocean. I remember getting painfully sunburned on that trip. I didn't want to leave the beach for a single minute. Everything about it fascinated me. I came home with about a thousand sandy sea shells and couldn’t shut my mouth for weeks because of all the stories there were to tell. I’ll bet you, too, remember your first glimpse of the ocean.

Spring is a reminder of the awesomeness of God’s creation. Summer is lush, autumn is exhilarating, but spring is simply dazzling, and we’re so ready to be dazzled. It’s awfully hard to contemplate the downfall of humankind and the darkness of the political climate when outside the window a flowering crab-apple is blasting forth with a billion lusty pink blossoms. I get so excited when I see hydrangeas thrusting green leaves out of brown, scaly skin, and hosta bursting through a sea of lemon balm in its quest for the sun. It makes me want to shout! Spring is our reward for surviving the cold misery of the winter tomb. It is a true resurrection. Hallelujah!

In the Spirit,
Jane