This morning I read these beautiful words by Parker Palmer:
In my own life, as my winters segue into spring, I not only find it hard to cope with mud but hard to credit the small harbingers of larger life to come, hard to hope until the outcome is secure. Spring teaches me to look more carefully for the green stems of possibility: for the intuitive hunch that may turn into a larger insight, for the glance or touch that may thaw a frozen relationship, for the stranger’s act of kindness that makes the world seem hospitable again.
I'm in what Palmer refers to as the "mud and muck" of early Spring. This has less to do with the trails of dirty paw prints my dogs leave on the floor every day and more with the mucky thaw that seems to be going on inside of me as I dig deeply into the book I'm writing, prepare for upcoming speaking engagements, and write for "aleteia/for her," a new women's lifestyle site I love.
These tasks involve raking away matted, decomposed leaves, digging into the wet earth of memory and imagination, and planting seeds in hopes that they will take in water, split open, and sprout.
This first newsletter of 2016 is a list of what's occupying my work hours so far this year. If you are attending Calvin College's Festival of Faith and Writing, I hope to see you there. And if you're looking for a book of essays on the ups and downs of embarking on midlife, look for my new book, When Did Everybody Else Get So Old? in early 2017.
That is, if these wispy seedlings take root and bloom.
Until then, wishing you peace.
Jennifer Grant