Mick Silva Editing

It's a glorious spring day here. The birds are serenading the sun as it warms the grassy marsh beneath the berry vines with their new bright green growth, reaching up, creating new perches.

I open the door and let in the warm breeze, the first of the new year. And a glorious discovery wafts in: here, the Pacific northwest, spring arrives well-dressed and on time to present Easter.

After months of preparation under cover of low light, the burst of contrasting colors brings readily to mind how new life and growth take place.

The drops of rain like words stored up, each arranged to their proper use, set to their infusing, slow work, the time finally arrives, and the connecting and reconnecting of relationships renews and revives, revealing the deeper purpose behind winter's seeming cruelty.

Sacrifice does finally produce the greater. 

But it's the waiting that hurts, the true, soul-starving reality of deep need and gnawing want, the inescapable suffering of those who embrace the long process involved. There is no denying how much the preceeding pain is required before the joy. And eventual is a hard, insufficient comfort. "Eventually, this, too, shall pass." How to rejoice in the waiting, the becoming?

Belief is the only way. Faith in the principles, the process. When you know and remember, when you see the testimonies, the longing takes on purpose, builds the anticipation, makes the hoping sweeter and sweeter still.

Yes, the soul says, this is how it works.

And this is the thought I have in the open door moment, the sun finally bursting in, the clouds finally falling away. This kind of rejoicing is on the other side of the suffering, the result for both the struggling writer becoming, and the believer believing.

It's Easter in the morning. We believe, though we don't yet see. We trust in the principle at work, the long, dull gray finally producing sharp vibrant contrasts. Light from dark, life from death.

He will come. He will rise. And we will be made joyful again.