Seasons of the Soul

My status update for Facebook today talks about hearing the cry of gulls last night and seeing the first V of geese returning from southern climes this morning, honking their arrival for all to hear and, hopefully, appreciate.  As I point out in that little post, these signs of thawing are most welcome and this thought led to another - if we are actually microcosms of the macrocosm, then we, too, have seasons. 

 

If you spend some time meditating on this idea, you quickly discover that it is true and that, in fact, our society works at cross purposes to this reality.  American society expects that we will always be on, that we will produce no matter how we may be feeling and that this is "the way things are" and there is no changing them.  Thus we spend our days working at jobs that have been set up to resemble assembly lines - whether we are bankers or doctors - and then rush home to fill the remaining time with tasks that must be done before we go to our rest. 

 

Meditation and other forms of self development become tasks that occupy spaces on our daily (hopefully) calendar, a time slot where we actually take some time to explore who we really are.  The amusing thing is that, if we persist with these practices, we truly begin to sync to the seasons of our own soul. 

 

We step off the constantly revolving treadmill in our lives and look around us.  We see the greening of the grass as the snow peels slowly away.  We hear the voices of the birds as we step out the door in the morning and we can even identify some of them (I love the sentinel crow in my neighborhood and the cheeky cardinal who trumpets his presence in a tree near my bus stop).  If we really, radically, step off the treadmill we may even be conscious of the energy of spring beginning to rise in nature around us and in ourselves. 

 

Such thoughts and feelings are subversive to the status quo.  I am happy to be a subversive this morning.