Gone away is the bluebird, here to stay is a new bird…It somehow seems like the new bird should be a cardinal, as dramatic in his red plumage as the bluebird, but utterly different. When something beautiful flies away it can be hard to trust that something just as lovely—but not at all the same—could be winging its way toward you.
What have you been able to see only when something else was gone?
I notice the replacement of form in the change of deciduous trees from their leafiness to fullness to color changes to their skeletal form. I notice these changes in the environment around my home place as well as in paintings. I have often said that when I see a Kandinsky painting that he has shown me clearly a stage in this change that I hadn’t noticed before. I call them “Kandinsky trees”. Of course, I realize that these changes are circular and will return to a previous form as the seasons swing around.
I can see the horses run and play in pasture when the leaves have fallen from the trees in the autumn and the trees remain bare until spring. Both of them came from a rescue organization that rescued them from two different farms were they were maltreated and malnourished. Now, the horses are inseparable and love to play together in the pasture – running, cantoring, galloping, and kicking their legs in the air. All these things they couldn’t do in the small pens where they were kept for the first part of their lives.
I found CLF only after moving away from the UU Congregation I used to belong to. I find it fits me better, though I do miss singing in the choir…