Hello Friend,

Spring wind and rain. Riding a bike to work this morning I rode under arbors of plum blossoms, their fragrance wafting away in the wind. Flowers and trees are blooming. Of course the wind and rain are essential for the flowers and blossoms to grow and scatter their seeds.

Snow dusted the mountain cathedrals rising above Red Rock Canyon last night and shines through the diaphanous morning light.

Spring is breaking forth here in the desert like early morning dawning across sleepy countryside wherever you love to roam. Within it all are seeds for life, growth, development and the raw love of life. Music fills the heart that is open, just as the birds that sing naturally to communicate who they are when they feel safe and at home.

For birds, flowers and blossoming trees it is natural, it is easy to be real, to be themselves, for they know no other.

But for us humans, with so much conditioning, so much stress and emphasis these days on high performance, profit, high yield and all around excellence it is like everybody in the work-a-day-world is trying to be someone else.

Yet my friends, the musicians and artists, parents and grandparents, teachers and care givers are most excellent when they come to themselves and express their own unique goodness, qualities and bare genius as themselves. Not pretending to be someone else. Just like dogs, flowers and blossoms.

And children, especially children that have not been changed by adults around them. Last night as I drifted off to sleep I thought of the special children that I worked with many years ago in a Group Home. They taught me how wonderful it is to be authentically myself, because they were so real about being themselves. Teachers and others used behavior modification on them at school and some in the Group Home. But I found them so beautiful and open just the way they were and taught me patience by trying mine, understanding by needing mine and love by opening my heart. What beautiful flowers and blossoms they were. I cry just thinking about them. Everyone has something special to give.

Be open to the wind, the rain, the flowers and the blossoms.

It's Good to be Alive! 

Rev. John

~Rev. John Wingfield is a Unity minister.  Ordained in 1977, he now serves as a "transitional" minister - healing and recreating community in various Unity churches around the country that are in change. He is currently serving Unity in Kent, WA.  He and his wife Jane have raised 3 children, and make their home in Olympia, Washington.