The bees are buzzing the apple blossoms, the dandelions brightening the open fields with their yellow sunny faces, and the air is filled with a delicate intoxicant. Spring is bursting with hope and promise as we await the whole of our world to open back thanks to the vaccinations being administered to all. What a miracle and promise after this dark year! I know there are many hardships still all about the globe, and my heart is breaking for all the suffering where people still languish. [Please take a moment to do what you can to ease someone’s struggle today]. I understand my privilege to walk under blue skies and, for this brief moment, I invite you to stroll along and take in the wondrous beauty in my small world.

In our front yard, the lilac collides with a small apple tree. Right now that combo is a perfume that defies defining. Sweet-scented and aromatic like pink and purple would smell could smell or might smell if you dreamt them in your sweetest dreams. Yeah. Exactly that.

Rivers run high this time of year, and this one whose waters race over pebble and rock draws my attention when I bike by. There is never a time I ride past without stopping to watch the light dance about the river or notice the swirling about from the eddy or enjoy the clarity of the water and am appreciative of the pause. Fluid peace in our very midst.

Sure I am angry too. Once again the Republicans in both the House and Senate are grabbing headlines, and not due to their outstanding care and diligence in protecting their constituents, but instead these guys are dragging their feet and playing party games. “Representative Tim Ryan (D-OH) spoke for those of us who are gobsmacked that anyone could say we do not need to investigate the most profound attack on our democracy in our history. “We have people scaling the Capitol, hitting the Capitol police with lead pipes across the head, and we can’t get bipartisanship. What else has to happen in this country? Cops: this is a slap in the face to every rank-and-file cop in the United States. If we’re going to take on China, if we’re going to rebuild the country, if we’re going to reverse climate change, we need two political parties in this country that are both living in reality—and you ain’t one of them” (Heather Cox Richardson). That’s only a piece of my outrage. Mis-information, or what we used to call lies, still flood FOX News and YouTubers and fuel the anti-vaxxers, so much so that less than half of Americans are taking advantage of the miracle of science. Beyond our borders India struggles in every human way and we watch with sorrow. The same for these days of the escalating clashes between the Palestinians and Israeli people which have left too many innocent children dead. The list of horror inexhaustible.

There is hardly a moment to find a breath, any solace, faint hope, yet we must.

Before day’s end I take one last hike up the road and saunter across the field to get to the best view of the setting sun. What a treat to stand by this small and noisy pond in late May and hear this cacophony. Turn up your volume and yeah, breath in for 3, then 4, then 5. Let yourself smile and believe, for there is a Light coming, and with all our attention and care and diligence, it will be brilliant.