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Billy and I had agreed we'd get up and go to church this morning, but when the alarm went off an apathy set in, a familiar fog. We'll be Downtown at our church twice in the coming week. Lord, make me holy, but just not right now, not this morning.
We've also been at church several times all ready this week attending functions with the PB. For anyone who might be reading this a PB is a Presiding Bishop. Our Presiding Bishop is Katherine Jeffers Schori who was elected in 2006. She is the first woman to hold the position. She has a Phd in oceanography and is a pilot herself. Her daughter is an Air Force Pilot! She's been here in Memphis this week. It's all been very exciting. She and Obama represent the new world order, an order that gives voice to all people and doesn't dismiss the voice of the poor, the powerless and the disenfranchised. They are the very beginning, I believe, of a new consciousness, a healthier consciousness that may heal the wounds of this earth, this broken planet.

I shook myself out of bed and tried to remember my dream. There was something about Sam as a baby. I held him in my arms and in my dream I experienced all the joy of the moment, the joy of holding my son in my arms. He was such an adorable baby, as most babies are, but Sam had a sweetness as an infant that was unusual; a tenderness that came with a power of observation, curiousity and fascination with the world.All of that came to me in my dream.

And in my dream there was a huge maple tree and the children were playing in it. One morning they went to play in it and it was broken off at the trunk. I knew it was irreplacable; that in their lifetimes I wouldn't be able to give them another tree to play in. I was sad. Later there was another scene that had to do with an abandoned town, an ocean, a mountain, Gertie falling into the water and having to be saved. My goodness! I was a busy bee last night.

I put the coffee water on and opened the back door to let the dogs out. It was so nice and warm that I walked out into the back yard with them.

My eyes are on the ground these days whenever I'm in my yard. I'm ever vigilant for signs of spring, little shoots peeking up through the ground. My tulips are visible and I've removed the little markers I put down last winter, markers to keep me from stepping on them. My wild phlox have buds on them, my clematis is climbing out of the dirt and up the light pole, my lenten roses are in full bloom and the gold mound spirea is full of tiny golden leaf buds waiting to unfurl.

I stood in the yard and listened to the chinking windchime in my neighbor's yard and the robin chattering above me. I was absorbed in the moment when my eye caught sight of something on the ground.

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It is a gift. I don't know where it came from. The wind woke up early this morning and scoured the treetops looking for seeds that were ready to fly. This brave little volunteer surrendered to the call and swirled through the air on the invisible wing of the morning wind. I have no idea how far away the seed pod's mother tree is. I don't know what kind of tree it might become if I pressed it into the ground, put a few bricks around it and waited until summer to check the shape of the leaves.

The color! chartreuse? lime green? It is the color of alive; the color of life. I picked it up and held it in the palm of my hand. I thought about the biology of it all–how the tree is full of all of this information, how it doesn't think about reproduction, life, death or growing. The tree just is and somehow knows how to cooperate with the wind in the spring to spead her seeds abroad knowing that some will land on the street and get brushed aside by traffic, never to see a bit of soft earth. Most of the seeds will land in yards or parks. They'll land in places that will keep them just far enough away from what they need to germinate that they'll rot and go back to the dust from whence we all came. Ocassionally a little seed pod will find it's way to safety and sprout in a flower bed underneath some azaleas and the owner of the flower bed won't even know the little tree is there until the tree is 2 or 3 feet tall. Then a decision will have to be made. I don't even like to think about it.
Occasionally a seed pod is immortalized in photography as this one was. I wonder how her mother and the wind will feel about that–––