“If you trust in Nature, in the small Things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge.

- Rilke

The sun comes out briefly, and the rain stops. I change lenses on my camera and call the dog. We walk the yard, each with our own agenda. I am taken in by the rain drops on the maple, while he lifts his nose to the smells in the yard.

I move into this new year with a bit more clarity and a will to live more fully. Maybe it is the class I am taking, or maybe I am finally ready to move beyond the last few years of lock down and crazy politics. Whatever the reason, I find myself allowing a little bit more of myself to emerge each day, trusting I will know what feels right.

***

How strange that the nature of life is change, yet the nature of human beings is to resist change.
And how ironic that the difficult times we fear might ruin us are the very ones that can break us open
and help us blossom into who we were meant to be.

— Elizabeth Lesser