This little clematis refuses not to resurrect. 

Did I get that double-negative correct?  It’s been sitting out in this pot for several years now.  It doesn’t always get enough water.  And other times it gets way too much.  It didn’t get enough TLC this past season and I was pretty sure we’d seen its last.  You can see I’m still not properly tending it, what with the sprouts of weeds starting all around the edge of the pot.  The seemingly dead shoots of last season still are here.  And yet . . .  a majestic new vine grows.  It even has the makings of a first blossom.  It’s getting stronger everyday and whether or not I help it along, soon this new vine will find its way to the trellis and make its home there for who knows how long — this season?  Next?  Maybe even the one after that until the cold kiss of winter finds it and the process begins all over again.

As I have been out in nature every chance I could get these past months, it has occurred to me that we seem to be the only creatures that fight it.  I’m sure I’m not the first to notice or write of it.  Do you notice it too?  The creation around us doesn’t rail against the transition from one season to the next.  Blazing autumn leaves don’t put up a fight against the death of winter.  They do not struggle against the letting go.  Somehow they freely release — almost knowing in the core of their being that it’s the only way for their greening to begin again.  Undeterred, they beautifully trust the pattern put in them from the start.  Are we, human beings, the only creatures of this grand creation that fail to get it?

O grant that we too might fall in trust into the glorious design deep within each cell of our being.  What an amazing ride through this beautiful life if we too could rely on it!  Only that which dies can rise again to any sort of new life . . .

Thy Way be done, Holy One.  Thy Way . . .