It feels womanly, the spring equinox, all nyads and dryads and fertility rites. Maybe the girl’s very girlie request for a pedicure party last year at this time wasn’t so far off after all. (from my journal)

Yesterday was the spring equinox. It was gorgeous here – all sunshine and shirtsleeves and yellow daffodils– picture postcard perfect!

Spring cleaning is a part of Norooz, which we are celebrating this week with our friends-who-love-all-things-Persian, so the girls and I decided to do our preistessy duty and spring-clean the anger altar. First we gathered up all the shards – a whole bucketful! I loved how some of them seemed to break just right – the face of a china doll from an Asian-style saucer; the word “furnace” from a souvenir plate; “wrong!” from a sentence someone had scribbled on a dish with a sharpie; the gold curved edge of a platter. Soon we’ll sort them out by color and spend a night at the Abbey making stepping stones from the remains. I don’t like to use the anger shards in mosaics right away, sometimes there’s a pretty significant pause between the “mourning” and the “dancing.” But I think, maybe now in this season of newness, we might be able to make something beautiful out of all this hurt and rage.

After we cleaned up all the larger bits of crockery, we dug up the whole flower bed and turned in two big bags of compost. The girls had fun finding their gardening gloves and digging with the lavender plastic spades my sister gave them last year on their birthdays. I’ve been keeping track of herbs and their meanings so we planted chives (“why do you weep”), rosemary (remembrance), sage (“i will suffer all for you.”), marigolds (despair), and calendula (grief). We also added things like mint (refreshment), thyme (daring), and chamomile (wisdom). (I also planted the culinary herbs in a plot elsewhere. Helene says we shouldn’t eat herbs growing around that much rage-y energy. I helped the girls tap the starts out of their small green containers and bed them down in the dark soil.

Afterwards we washed off last year’s stepping stones and re-arranged them, putting incense in the one with the incense holder. The girls were done by then and went inside for granola bars, but I lit a few sticks and sang grateful songs.

It took all my energy to tend this small bed of growth. The result of an hour’s work meant we ate cold cuts for supper because it was all I could rally to. Still, I’m grateful for the experience, grateful for a new start four times a year at the turn of the seasons – it’s such a testimony to the unceasing graciousness of God.

I’m glad we made time to be present to the gift of Spring.