Yet even here, grace falls.

Here, where the darkness appears as real as the light, where danger dances with beauty, where fear and sorrow share equal time with hope and joy.

Even here, grace falls.

Nothing escapes the heart of the Great Yes.  Nothing can loose itself from its joy and compassion.

It sings its song ceaselessly, and its melodies extend to the breadth and depth of all creation.

Never doubt, my child. Whatever may befall you, you are seen, and known, and infinitely loved.

Let you heart be open and your mind be free.  Goodness and beauty surround you.

And always and everywhere, grace falls.

From distant shores, dreams beckon, islands of hope, half hidden by the mists of future time.

Their siren call echoes through our sleep and roots itself in our bones.  “Come,” they sing, “Come.”

When we wake, they drift up in unnamed desires, pulling at our wanting for something, oh, larger somehow, and deeper.

And sometimes, when our thoughts are at ease and our hearts are open, we catch a glimpse of their towering possibilities and they startle us with their light.

Some shrink back at moments like these, feeling themselves made small by the grandeur.  But the bold, oh the beautiful bold, leap up, shouting, Eureka!” and set sail.

It comes to soothe and quiet us, to smooth our rough places, to soften our hard edges.  It kisses our cheeks and eyelashes.  It rides our breath and melts into our being, nourishing us with its purity, filling our hollows.

It cannot help but come to us.   Our hearts keep lights for it in their windows.  Just as the earth is to snowflakes, so are our hearts love’s home.

Deny it to no one, to nothing; love that is conditioned isn’t love at all.

Call to the sun.  Ask it to release every frozen bit of you.  Ask it to teach you fearlessness and joy.

You are as real as the tree, and no more, as real as its reflection in the still pond and as the pond, and no more.

The transient is just that, and is no less for its impermanence.  Its experiences make their indelible marks on our souls, and that is why we come: to gather that which can be gathered no other way.

That is the enchantment of this place and the bliss of it.

So the year’s first child leaves us, her last sun pouring down its golden rays in benediction on all our bright dreams.

Tomorrow the next one will come toddling in, brand new, its arms gift-laden.

Their visits are so brief and fleeting.  And each gives us its all–seconds, minutes, hours, days–to do with as we please, to make whatever choices we will, as they unfold their weather and usher along the seasons.

Oh, January!  How we heralded your birth!  You, the bringer of fresh hopes and renewed aspirations.

Forgive us for how quickly we forget them, and know that your life force will stir them again and again as your siblings come with new chances.

For all the beauty and dreams you brought us, our thanks.  Farewell, beautiful January.  Farewell.

She had, she wanted us to know, heard the wishes of our hearts.

She heard the way we yearned for the beauty of the crystalline fairylands that the frost painted on our windows.  She caught our desire to be lost in the dazzle of new fallen snow.

She smiled in tenderness at our wonder over the pastel puffs of clouds that danced on the sunset sky, and at the colors of the rainbow that she had stretched across the fields.

Soon, she would be leaving.  But she could not go without giving us one final gift.

And so, with one sudden wave of her wand, just as the sun was setting, January combined all those elements that had brought us such joy into one, quick, wondrous gift.  And it transformed the land and made our hearts sing.

“Ice,” said the voice in my head as I glanced at the puddle.  “Tea,” it said, noticing how the sticks intersected.  I laughed out loud.

The labels go on and on and on, from the moment we learn the words.  I suppose it keeps us anchored in the world somehow.

Then the words trigger memories and dreams.  So although it is late January and I am standing in freezing rain, in my mind I am gazing at fields of tall, green corn on a hot, windless day in mid-July, and it is not rain but perspiration running down my cheeks, and I hear the tinkle of ice cubes in a tall glass of tea and smell lemon.

I splash through it to the bank of the green, swollen creek and its roar rises to meet the falling rain.  Even the drenched air cannot mute it, though it wraps itself, cloud-like, around every twig and fills all the spaces.

The light is like ground pearls, milky and luminescent.  It laughs as it rides the rushing waters, as it slides down the naked braches and over the leathery surface of the leaves.

In town, people hurried along beneath black umbrellas, their shoulders hunched, their eyes cast down to the drab sidewalks, blind to the rivers of light that ran down the gutters.

But here, the colors glow, and the world is raining beauty.

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What if you had a hundred arms that you could lift up to the heavens?  What if you lived to be two hundred years old and stood in one place as the world changed around you?

What if birds perched on your wrists and sang in the morning?  Or built homes on your shoulders and raised their young there?

Would you be afraid of tomorrow?

Would you dwell on your yesterdays?

Or would you long only to stretch higher and farther and to welcome the wind?  And to revel in the rain and the white, sparkling snow?  And to dance beneath the sunlight and the bright moon and twinkling stars, and to be so very glad just to be?