I like to think of Spring as a time full of pushing and tension. You see these flowers appear and you feel these winds change the temperature outside, it feels so gradual as to be motionless. But then you watch some of those amazing, fast-forward images of plants growing or seasons changing over time lapse, and suddenly you realize how much striving and pushing there is in growth. Its resistance and overcoming resistance. This video for example:

Its beautiful, and captivating, and its even a little violent. It reminds me that our lives are not premised on finding stasis and stillness only. Sometimes, we require periods of growth, even explosive growth.

A song comes to mind when I think about this kind of change-through-striving, or perhaps growth+resistance that allows us to flourish. It’s been in my head for a few weeks. If you’d like to carry it around in yours for a bit, here’s a beautiful live version of “Green and Evergreen” by the band Darlingside from back in the COVID times, when it was hard to be together, let alone perform together. But music blooms just as flowers do, and striving against pandemic, this music still emerged.

Sometimes it is hard to tap into our spiritual selves or find time to nurture our creativity and intellectual curiosity. Here is a section that reflects on some nourishing materials from around the web and related media channels in order to get us thinking, get us feeling, and get us reflecting on the lives we are living in this big world. **Some Adult/Mature Themes May Appear in Links and Other Attached Material**

–––––––––––––––

Allan T. Georgia, MDiv, MTS, PhD