I love the religious festivals of spring.  I love the Easter promise that new life can emerge from seeming death.  I love the Passover promise of release from bondage of the past into a liberating future.  Ramadan, though not always a spring holiday, coincides this year with a month of self-reflection and purification, like the Christian Lent, or the Jewish High Holy Days, preparing us for a new beginning.

I love the promise inherent in spring itself, the new life coming up all around us, the longer days and lightening skies.  I love the sense of possibility and the energy in the warmer air.  This year, maybe especially, with the waning of the coronavirus pandemic, it feels like we are emerging afresh into a new world, ready to be re-made.

And the world needs re-making!  Earth Day, this Friday, reminds us that with all of nature’s remarkable powers of healing and renewal that we must do our part, too.  Our human, social problems, need our attention.  I firmly believe that we are smart enough, strong enough, and good enough, to create lives of health and joy for ourselves, for each other, and for the world we share but doing so requires not merely believing in our power, but the final part of a complete faith:  using it.