Poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote with wonder:

Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

As I looked out my kitchen window this morning I saw blue skies and the road sprinkled with flower pedals from the nearby trees – it looked like confetti.

And as I drove through town on my way to Heritage Heights I kept seeing more confetti from more pink and red and white blossoming trees. And the wind blew it around whimsically and it was something that I think I might have missed if something hadn’t woken up in me as I looked out my kitchen window.

And I thought about the flowers – heralding the return of the tree’s leaves, making way for fruit and seed. And the word flourishing came to my mind.

And as Mother Nature begins to flourish and celebrate the return of vitality we may feel left behind, like we’re not quite sure how to emerge from the winter that has been our emotional experience for months now, what I mentioned in a reflection last week has been called “languishing.” How do we begin to emerge as individuals and as a community from the closed up, confined winter lifestyle we’ve become so accustomed to under this pandemic. The outside world is opening up and we still feel rather closed.

I wanted to share an article I found to be really helpful in thinking about the emotional aspect of this reality we are all navigating right now. In many ways it is a response to the article on languishing.

Author Dani Blum writes:

With vaccination rates on the rise, hope is in the air. But after a year of trauma, isolation and grief, how long will it take before life finally — finally — feels good?

Post-pandemic, the answer to that question may be in your own hands. A growing body of research shows that there are simple steps you can take to recharge your emotional batteries and spark a sense of fulfillment, purpose and happiness. The psychology community calls this lofty combination of physical, mental and emotional fitness “flourishing.” It is the exact opposite of languishing, that sense of stagnation Adam Grant wrote about recently for The Times.

“Flourishing really is what people are ultimately after,” said Tyler J. VanderWeele, an epidemiology and biostatistics professor and director of Harvard’s Human Flourishing Program. “It’s living the good life. We usually think about flourishing as living in a state in which all aspects of a person’s life are good — it’s really an all-encompassing notion.”

I encourage you to take a moment to read the article when you can: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/04/well/mind/flourishing-languishing.html

If you reach a paywall and don’t have a subscription, you can read it in PDF form here.

Healing isn’t automatic – it won’t come for us as freely and easily as the lilacs or the cherry blossoms. But the good news is that we already have all that we need to begin to heal, open up, and flourish too. Savoring and celebrating small things, establishing gratitude routines, and random acts of kindness are among the suggestions in the article – anything that connects us again to the energy of love always already at work in us and in the world.

May you be well and supported today and be inspired by the flourishing all around us, and may the blessing of God or all that sustains you, keep you safe, grant you peace and fill you with all that you need, just for today. Amen.