A Paean to the Creator of Spring

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In my heart harbors a book full of paean to the Creator of Spring. What a season of the year! O’ what a season of our lives!

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...Incline thy ear in intimate attention as the book reads herself. Maybe, you’ll catch her story. Maybe, even the luminous story within her story.

In early spring, a flower fell in love with a sweet song bird. He wooed her and she opened herself to him as he brushed her with the pollen from a distant male of her own species. In the misty dew of early mornings, her lover was her delight. He sung for her, as he watched her metamorphosis into a fruit.

At first she was small, green and hard. Her color and appearance blended in with the surrounding leaves. As she baked in the heat of the summer sun, her size enlarged. By late summer, beautiful streaks of color grew in, gradually replacing her green. Now she stood out from among her leafy companions. Her lover bird found another of his own species, nested in a higher branch.

Yet, the growing fruit wasn’t alone, as her lover’s song echoed from a higher perch. Also, as she looked about, she noticed more and more color streaked companions peering from among the leafy greens. As their colors expanded and deepened, so did their companionship.

Then autumn transformed the colors of the leaves to match the fruits. Now fruits and leaves shared color companionship once more. But, this wasn’t to last. Soon windy gusts howled down the leaves, exposing brightly colored fruits in full view. Our fruit was no exception. Naked, she felt vulnerable.

The temperature was dropping and food scarce. Along came a salivating beast. With a swift swipe, he separated our fruit from her life source. She cried longingly as she fell. Thud!  She hit the ground in front of him and entered his domain.

He nibbled off her tasty flesh, leaving her core for dead on cold soil. Soon the winter gales buried her in a snowy grave. Silent and dormant, here she spent winter - a mere skeleton of the beauty she was.

In time, the temperature slowly warmed. The sun spent more and more time each day in her vicinity. Her burial site melted away, softening the soil underneath. Clearly, she was no longer a fruit, her familiar life form. Yet to her utter surprise, life began to stir within her, transforming her in an unfamiliar direction. She didn’t know who or what she was.

Newly alive, she sent out two sprouts reaching out in opposite directions: one sprout bore into the soil to gather food and another tenderer one reached up to greet the rising sun.  As her sprouts grew and grew into the growing warmth of spring, she realized that she was becoming the very kind of tree which had sheltered and nurtured her just one cycle ago.

Now, her heart burst into songs of praise to the Creator over her transformation, as she longingly looked forward to the fruits she was destined to birth and nurture into the fullness of life.

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