A sunny springtime day at Camp Magruder has a way of drawing you outside from the stuffy office. I took a stroll this morning, and it lightened my mood from the sleepiness I dragged into work today. The life opening up everywhere had my head, heart, and spirit pondering stuff I thought worthy of sharing.
I started at North Ballfield where the grass is deep green from spring rains, and the ornamental cherry trees have blossomed in pink and white. Birds and squirrels are hard at their morning tasks, and you can hear the calls of Stellar's Jays, Red-winged blackbirds, and Ducks on the lake. The sun shined around
several puffy clouds, and the new spring energy can began to rub off on me. My brain wanted to explain it, thinking ahead to this post.
All that thinking felt too much like work this morning, though, so I leaned more into the senses and feelings responding to the morning air and bursts of colors. Parts of me were responding ways I couldn't access with words and explanations. It's a way I've been trying to listen to the spirit more recently, trying to think and feel without words. What do the blooms on the trees say when they can't talk? How do they know God and the stuff inside them that says, "Grow."
I walked farther down Camp Magruder's main road, stopping at the Sherlock deck. Smith Lake was 
smooth and green, reflecting the color that has been filled in by the Alders sprouting leaves. Smith Mountain is a mix of a bright, almost neon green and the deeper forest green of the conifers.
If it were a typical year, school buses would be dropping off middle schoolers for a week of Outdoor School. They would test samples collected from the lake and learn about all the tiny creatives who live there. This day was quiet, but part of me sensed the voices that had filled the air in the years past. I asked for blessings on the ones who had made those sounds before and the ones who would come in the future and return words into this air. The quiet of today was also saying something too.
As I approached the dining hall, I saw the blooming rhododendrons in front of the Meditation Patio path. These rhodie bushes are close to 20 feet tall in places, and they explode bright colorful flowers in Spring. At most angles my camera couldn't capture sharp images of the blooms, because the magenta was so bring. It was like taking pictures of small ultraviolet suns.
My prayerful walk ended at the boathouse, where I looked out on Smith Lake one more time under the deep blue of the sky and the cottony clouds. 
The colors of the world were deeper than what seemed like "normal." I felt awake and alive. I felt thankful.
A song occurred to me along the walk we used to sing at camp when I was first counseling, Hymn of Promise. It starts, "In the bulb there is a flower, in the seed an apple tree. In cocoons a hidden promise, butterflies will soon be free."
I sang it alone, and thought about how the song was surely written on a day like this. The song ends, "In the cold and snow of Winter, there's a Spring that waits to be. Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see."
I saw all around me the signs of Spring being revealed. I felt this prayer in my body, waiting for what else was in store to be revealed, listening peacefully to the spirit of life and growth doing its work in this place I live, hopefully doing its work in me too.
Have you taken a walk like this recently? Has the Spring spoken in mysterious and refreshing ways that to try to explain wouldn't do it justice? Have your walks in the present brought you in touch with things past and future all at once? It is comforting to think many of us are sharing walks like these at the same time, until we can walk again together. Many blessings on your next walk.
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