Scarlet

I’d been back from my trip for several days and had finally gone out to tend to my garden (it looked sad) and the bird bath (it was dry) and to sweep up the leaves that collected.

•

My absolutely favorite succulent, about the size of a teacup, has been a lush velvety green—at least for as long as I’ve known it anyway—and just this summer it really began to thrive in it’s sunny location. Around autumn several small orangey blossoms began to appear on it. What? A new season a new outfit I suppose. But I hardly expected to return from my trip to find it dressed in scarlet. It looks stunning! It is growing and changing with the new season.

•

What a difference a change of season can make. In our gardens, in our lives—in ourselves if we’ll let it. Perhaps we’ll feel something different beginning to flow. A new energy, a renewing of passion for a thing that lay dormant. Inside something new, something feeling vaguely electric may be starting to flow once again. Of course it’s not springtime yet. I know it sounds like I describing spring while winter has just begun. Winter is, as we know, the season for dormancy and stillness and such. But perhaps there’s yet something new stirring in your heart in this season of stillness.

•

Let it! Don’t tamp it down. Let it flow. Doubts and nagging voices aside, allow the fresh flow of a new move in your heart begin to propel you forward. Movement means there’s still life inside. Small, incremental movement will take us from where we were in the previous year or even yesterday into a new place of heart and mind. Take a look in the mirror. Are you scarlet?