Lent Photo a Day: Celebrate

Today’s word is “celebrate.” I’ve already described both how I celebrate (by sabering champagne) and when I celebrate (solemn holidays as well as joyful ones), but today I choose a photo that describes what I celebrate. What I celebrate today, at least, is the coming of spring.

 After too many weeks of snow and cold, today was full of warmth, and sun, and blue skies. Spring has not yet come, but I celebrate the harbingers of it: the blue skies, the birdsong, the brightness, the puddles, even the dirty snowbanks. The sun finally has a bit of warmth to it. The skies which burn blue behind puffy white clouds. The animals peering out of their holes and dens and nests. The changing sights, and the changing sounds. The anticipation of new life. The expectation of green shoots, and baby birds and animals, and the smells of new life.

I’ve forgotten where I read it, but many years ago, I read something that commented how human beings have a desire for both familiarity and change, and how the repeating seasons satisfy that need. Just when we are tired of one season, it rolls over to the next – and yet, we always know what to expect, because the seasons follow each other in the same order they always have. We are tired of the winter, but we know the spring will soon arrive. Just when spring has ceased to be enough for us, it blossoms into the heat of summer, and when we tire of the heat, it cools into the colorful beauty of fall, which rolls its eventual deadness into the pure, clean, white of winter, which grows dirty and stale just in time to blossom once again into the new life of spring. Familiarity and change. It’s something to enjoy, to look forward to, and to celebrate.

Celebrate.