Today I went out for a run - it is likely the last of the temperate winter sun before a cold snap plunges us back into the blue winter. It took all of my energy to get outside today because it feels like we’re only slipping into the year and it’s already getting away from us entirely.
I usually use my runs to tune out the world if I can and perhaps to noodle on some little issue or another or perhaps to sticky-note my own brain (remember, remember, remember). As I rounded the corner past the panoramic park on the edge of a hill, I noticed a low tree that was starting to sprout small fuzzy buds. And of course, the relief that spring is around the corner is always mixed with the kind of eco-dread that’s become prevalent in my mind the last few years. Climate change forcing new springs.
Yet I can’t help but be heartened by nature’s capacity to regenerate itself. It bends around, over, under, inside and out of the unnatural, folding our small tinkerbox creations into its vast and mossy arms. While we sit here fretting about missed deadlines and lists and Outlook (heaven help us), nature goes full gusto on yet another fabulous season.
Somedays it’s hard to be hopefully. Sometimes the moral arc (or whichever sort of arc you might want to call upon) seems to not bend, and perhaps even to retract when we feel like we’ve moved forward. But then I remember, that nature leans into stasis - a sense of equilibrium, always, always. And our ability to regenerate is a reflection of that nature.
Any big idea is a long game. In our small lifetimes we have created a lot of noise, the results of which we won’t fully see for many generations. But always there is the capacity to regenerate when things have fallen down - to create differently, maybe better, to take our communities along, and to draw from the deep well of nature’s ever proliferating fuzzy buds.
Things I’m reading/thinking about right now.
This is Love, a podcast hosted by Phoebe Judge
Becoming Wise, written by Krista Tippett (I’m pacing myself)
The Six Grounding Virtues, to think about early in this year