Even though Equinox is weeks away, it’s starting to feel like Spring. The sun is higher in the sky and creating welcome warmth. Winter’s abundant gift of snow, still many feet deep in the woods, is slowly melting. Water is beginning to drip and run. A few hearty birds are singing. Northern Minnesota Spring is an entire season lasting one quarter of the year.

It will be several months before my garden will shed its white blanket, but I am thinking of seeds. What magic there is in planting a seed! With proper heat and light, the seed will decide when it is time to break open, to extend its first tender roots into nutrient moisture and soil. The seed will decide when it is time to push its life force out of the soil, toward the sun, in a lovely fresh sliver of green. The seed will decide its own season, its own timing. It will reach ever skyward, developing a sturdy trunk and a parasol of leaves. It will create the amazing bud of a flower, which slowly opens and then matures into a fruit. In the Fall it will spread its seeds of hope onto the ground for next year.

The journeys of plants have their own timing. So does the Spring. We can’t hurry it. Our own spiritual journey is the same. We can’t jump ahead, but with attention to opportunity we can enrich our path. This is also true of humanity––we are on a collective journey that can’t be rushed. All any of us can do is plants seeds, making sure that our own journey aligns with the path we hope humanity will take.