Today my friend and I went by a stream to make a spring ritual, say prayers, let go of the old and dying, open ourselves to the resurgent life of spring, wash each others’ feet in the waters, baptize ourselves and each other with the water of newly enspirited life. Ah spring. Lying on our backs on a rock as the spring bubbled around us we looked up at the trees with leaves just beginning to push into life. In another week the thin, tender growth will be full. As summer moves in, thickness and density take over. I could feel the same life cycle bursting through our cells.

As these themes of death and resurrected life are also honored on the Christian calendar this week at Easter, and Earth day is tomorrow, I offer these gorgeous lines of Rainer Maria Rilke from his Ninth Duino Elegy:

Earth, isn’t this what you want? To arise in us, invisible?
Is it not your dream, to enter us so wholly
There’s nothing left outside us to see?
What, if not transformation,
is your deepest purpose? Earth, my love
I want that too. Believe me,
no more of your springimes are needed
to win me over – even one flower
is more than enough. Before I was named
I belonged to you. I see no other law
but yours, and I know I can trust
the death you will bring.