I love the transition seasons (spring and fall) and I am thrilled that spring seems to be on its way her in Vancouver.  The world is coming alive with fresh growth and tendrils of warmth from the sun.

I tend to see metaphor all around me and that includes the seasonal shifts.  The spring blossoms remind me of the cycles of our own lives.  As trite as it may sound, I see hope in the shoots springing up from the once frozen ground.

In our lives, we often go through periods of stillness and even stagnation.  While in those experiences, it can be difficult to imagine that life could possibly change and improve at all.  Spring reminds me that it IS possible, and maybe even inevitable, that growth and life will happen again.  It shows me that there is nothing so barren in my life that a little greenery can’t poke through.  Spring also demonstrates how such growth occurs as a slow and gradual process.  Just as the bulb in the ground takes time and attention to become a daffodil (my favourite!), so too our own movement toward new paths requires time and gentle focus to come to fruition.

May we all give ourselves the gift of compassion toward ourselves as we determine our own next steps forward.  May we also acknowledge the first steps need not be big, sometimes the first thing to do is simply to look in the direction we wish to go.