Blessed Re-Emergent Spring

One week ago, the full blush of spring radiated from the azalea festival in Tyler, TX, highlighted by dogwoods, redbuds, wisteria, and even the smiling new-green deciduous trees. This we forfeited in driving northeast, returning home, still adorned in winter earth tones. And yet the loss finds redemption in allowing the feel of manifestation, the pre-budding, the reassurance of imagination, of intuitive knowing, of faith which is the evidence of the unseen. This tantalizingly slow emergence of spring feeds the soul.

“… opening of a window in the heart towards the unseen also takes place in conditions approaching those of prophetic inspiration, when intuitions spring up in the mind unconveyed through any sense-channel” (The Alchemy of Happiness, Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali, Trans. Claud Field, pp. 19-20).

        Yesterday shuffling through the dusty leaves fallen last autumn, I almost stumble over the pale blooms of bloodroot. This modest forerunner of spring holds the miraculous powers of rejuvenation. Its long history of medicinal uses includes promises such as these:

“to prevent certain types of cancer, protect against infections, boost heart health, improve the appearance of the skin (including elimination of conditions like eczema), speed healing and recovery, increase circulation, and soothe the pain of migraines . . . a very powerful plant and can be dangerous (even toxic) if used incorrectly.”  https://www.organicfacts.net/bloodroot.html

         Returning from our trip to the Southwest, we also stopped in Athens, GA, hoping to find the coffee-house where Coleman Barks tapped the life-spring of Jalalu’ddin Rumi. In the one we found, they told us Coleman recently did a reading there but that his coffee shop was probably no longer around. Like spring flowers so soon gone from sight. But not gone, just waiting. Ghazali again:

“The first step to self-knowledge is to know that thou art composed of an outward shape, called the body, and an inward entity called the heart, or soul. . . In truth [the heart/soul] does not belong to the visible world, but to the invisible, and has come into this world as a traveller visits a foreign country for the sake of merchandise, and will presently return to its native land” (p. 18).

        Back home, I’m catching up on reading from Coleman’s Year with Rumi , one window into that invisible space and treasure. For April 6, he gives “Blessing”: “I want to be where/ your bare foot walks,// because maybe before you step,/ you will look at the ground./ I want that blessing.”