Spring can be the most difficult season of the year catching us between the rising tide of life and the damp caverns of memory that lie among the sleepy roots of our being. It is time to attend the soil that has lain fallow for many months -- we are, after all, animated ground. April can be an agitating month, leaving us to ride out this new, insistent life from places inside us never before reached. Kites, in the driven skies, tug at thin strings that tether them to earth, just as our souls tug at our bodies. Swallows and purple martins dive heart-stoppingly into the emptiness. Something light and lithe in us responds. . . . We are, after all, much more than rational beings.
Tending a garden nourishes the human desire to give form to mystery and offers ground for growth, not only for plants that nourish and delight, but for engagement of self and the world. There is a sacramental element in watching a living thing flourish under our care toward its full potential, and what this nurturing opens in us becomes written on the human soul.
~ from "The Patient Reach for Light" by Anita Lange in "Parabola" Spring, ‘05