Quietly Unfurling

Every spring in my home woodlands, the oak leaves open so suddenly that I imagine each tree as an opening umbrella. I hear an imaginary whoosh of unfurling and protection.

I listen as other deciduous trees join the oaks in opening. I shelter under one, without asking of its species. It’s still small, yet a veteran of many winters. That tree has never moved from the meadow’s uphill edge, never wavered from its assignment to grow right there. It grows without any instruction but instinct. It grows without any reward but growth itself. It waited all winter for its new growth to become visible.

Growth is innate and unstoppable. I see no evidence that anyone’s ever attempted to prevent spring. Climate stress is inducing changes, from earlier flowers to dying fir trees, but growth only shifts forms. I know the progression the meadow flowers will still take, through soft waves of purple, yellow, and pink. Green grasses will transform the brown. The remaining songbirds will reappear from wherever they wintered. I’ll feel my annual wish to ask them of their travels. I’ll sense my own instinctive stirrings, calling me toward song and soaring. For the moment, though, I’m still. And I sense your stillness beside me.

Our shared stillness reminds me: growth comes from moments of rest as well as from persistent exertion. It can come from standing still with strength and faith. Moments finally arrive when our growth unfurls without further effort. We create momentum. We reach positive tipping points. We open as suddenly as oak leaves, then, with that same quiet insistence.

Gratitude unfurls in the same subtle way as spring, and just as intertwined with the darkness. Mine was growing long before it became noticeable, taking root in my deep inner black. Now it has tangibly emerged, as sturdy as the oak roots.

Daily before dawn, it’s easier for me to rise than it once was, given gratitude as the spirit with which I greet each day. That subtly shifts my interactions with others: I have a bit more kindness, a higher commitment to service, a deeper strength in my quiet voice. Slowly, I’m growing and healing.

I also notice more gratitude within others. It’s easier to sense in you what I’m attuned to in me. Paying refined attention heightens my recognition of our shared spirit. Becoming actively grateful for you is a natural result of connecting with your roots, of touching into our resonance. My gratitude arrives as wildly as the songbirds, and begins to sing.

Yes, with gratitude as with birds. If we tend to gratitude’s habitat, it thrives. If not, it vanishes. And gratitude’s habitat is the natural beautiful world for which we were born.

Returning to gratitude is a return to nature: that wisdom also returns again and again, like dawn, like spring. So each day I rise with the first birds, touching the driftwood on my windowsill, inscribed as it is with our simple shared daily task: Let us be grateful.

Gratitude yet to arrive is already useful now, like next spring is already beautiful. Knowing new gratitude is on its way deepens my embrace of what’s currently difficult yet transient. It assists me in knowing what shelter to gratefully build, to then share with others in coming storms. Gratitude may take ages to seed and sprout, only emerging in a future when the songbirds still arrive but you and I no longer do.

The trees remind me to grow instead of worry. I watch in grateful wonder as another leaf unfurls.