Living Fruitful Lives

The red-winged blackbirds perch on the cattails
Last year's cattails that are going to seed
Their brown firmness gone
They are transformed into down
Leaving stalks with strange, bleached tufts and wisps of fluff on them.

Some of the cattail fluff
Is carried off to pad nests
And comfort the little lives
That hatch and fledge there
Or becomes bedding for fieldmice,
Muskrats, and chipmunks.

Some is eaten by bugs
Or it rots on the stalk
Or in the mud of the marsh
Enriching the soil

And some of the tiny seeds that it carried
Burst open and grow anew.

May God grant us richly fruitful lives, and may many benefit thereof.

And may we also appreciate how very humble a fruitful life can be.

Spring is Coming!

It was a draining and busy week.
But today dawned sunny and calm, if cold.

Making my way across the parking lot to go to work, I was impressed with all the birdsong that the Sun was inspiring.

Then I heard a call that jarred me out of my routine, a red-winged blackbird. The red-wingers are common birds, which overwinter as far north as New Jersey and Pennsylvania, -but this one was doing the male territorial cry, which I haven't heard this winter. Looking about, I spied him atop a telephone pole, singing gustily against the blue sky.

It may be cold, he says, but
Spring is Coming.

How appropriate and encouraging to end this cold week in the Lent-thening of days with a sign of the spring to come.

Blessed Be!