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"Ah, to understand how to bloom: then would the heart be carried

beyond all milder dangers, to be consoled in the great one."

Rilke, Uncollected Poems

The shy sliver of the moon has been steadily growing and now hangs heavy and lush in the cool spring night. It will be full on Friday, the beginning of Passover and Good Friday.   A hugely luminous Jupiter trails her like a devoted companion.  The evening ritual of watching the sun relinquish its fire to the curtain of night will soon end, for the trees grow more lush with green every day.  In a few weeks it will be difficult to see even the full moon until it has climbed high above the tree tops.

Spring across the world in all faiths, is marked by powerful rituals that honor the mystery of rebirth out of the countless masks of darkness.  Against what appears to be impossible, the miracle occurs, whether in the seed that sprouts, the egg laid, a people delivered, or a resurrection.  All mysteriously deliver the Real World and us into  new life.

In the nourishing rituals of these Holy Days, made even more precious by the strife we see all around us, the experience of the mysterious seems even more essential.   We will never all think alike, be alike, act alike. That is part of the mystery. But the moment in which the seed opens, the egg glistens, a people spared or a life resurrected are all the same invitation to let go--even if only  for a moment-- our fearful need to control what we cannot explain and open our hearts instead to the wonder that sustains.