Bloom you fools, Bloom!

The primroses by the front walk think it is spring. Tiny yellow flowers and tiny purple flowers nestled in wrinkly new-green leaves surprised me yesterday as I arrived home. I guess they don't care that it is getting down to a shivery 24 degrees at night.

I could learn a lesson from them. Perhaps something about the courage to be yourself, even when it doesn't seem like a safe thing to do. The knowledge that you must be yourself, standing on a sidewalk holding a rainbow flag, across from the anti-gay protestors. The brave and foolish urge to push through the dirt, toward the sun, and to bloom, singing from the heart in front of hundreds of people, in thanks for being alive.

I learned a chant from Starhawk back in 1983, at a huge open ritual, in Portland, OR.

"Like the grasses

Though the dirt and the soil to the sunlight

We shall rise again.

We are thirsty

For the waters of life we are reaching

We shall live again."