Desert Bloom

Dave Brisbin 3.17.19 Second Sunday of Lent: Trying to sit quietly in balcony chair and warm sunlight but shadows keep flitting across my closed eyes. Every time I look, nothing there, until finally I catch a smallish butterfly streaking by. Then another. And another, until I realize there’s a dense column all driving overhead in the same direction. Later I learn of the one billion butterflies migrating north to Oregon and beyond…because the rains this winter in the interior deserts dropped annual rainfall levels in single weekends, and dormant seeds and bulbs under the desert floor bloomed into carpets of flowers that caterpillars loved and survived into a billion butterflies going north. We notice a billion butterflies, but how often do we notice just one? Lent is about becoming people who don’t wait, like dormant, buried seeds for spectacular rains to bring a billion butterflies into our awareness, but actively search out the water and growth that allows us to see each and every butterfly that crosses our path. Jesus speaks of the cry of all creation showing us the truth, Paul gives us a three-part roadmap to the kind of awareness that really sees and celebrates whatever creation is right in front of us, right now. Whether a billion or just one, no longer waiting for a spectacular desert bloom, we make the desert bloom anytime any time we choose.