Watching for Spring

I’m watching for Spring to come. I’m watching for the moment when Winter gives way. How will I know when Spring arrives?

Will it be like the moment a baby is born, heralded by noise, and mess----when everything tells us plainly that we are all changed by this new arrival?

Or will it be more like the moment a person like you becomes my friend? That’s when I know something deep has arrived between us. We see each other more clearly now.

Maybe Spring arrives like the moment when a far-off, curling wave finally crosses the ocean to fall upon the beach. Then I’m sure that the wave has finished its journey only when I see it pulling away, once it begins to be gone.

Will Spring arrive in a moment of green, like she always is in my memory? Or can I see that Spring arrives before the green –--when snow relaxes into water, when the north wind no longer pushes us down into our coats, when the seeds that the birds look for on the ground sink into the soft mud.

I’m watching for Spring. I am watching, for one moment, then watching still. I am here, ready to welcome Spring in whatever costume she decides to wear.

Spring may return to us as a queen, with purple crocus regal robes, brilliant forsythia bracelets, a sky blue crown.

Spring may arrive as a mud-brown turtle, cautiously venturing to the pond’s edge, or as a modest pulse of rain waking the worms beneath the grass, or as the unmusical crash of the last ice sliding off the roof.

I can look for her in the tattered old leaves just visible again under the melting snow. She may be one of those visitors who come to us humbly and turn out to be angels.

Spring may surprise me with her splendor. She may tiptoe into view. I’m watching closely, as quietly as breathing.

How will I know the moment Spring arrives? I will wait and I will see.

Learning to be Good

As a child, I yearned to be good. Not just pleasant-table-manners good, but profound, give-away-all-your-belongings-like-St.-Francis good. This may surprise anyone who knew me back then, since I appeared to be a competitive, selfish, critical little pill of a girl, but that’s the story of my life: I want to be good and I don’t know how.

I don’t mean that I don’t know what actions are good. That’s usually clear enough: be honest, be kind, help others, and share what you have. The difficult part is how to be the type of person who really is good, who has good impulses, who wants to be good. How do you become more compassionate, more kindly, and more patient? How do you transform yourself so that you are happily, not grudgingly, good?