Is it just me, or is Spring especially feisty this year?
Here in the Holler, Winter paints every nook and cranny in dampened shades of brown and grey, and wears down even the most positive attitude with endless days of freezing rain.
One of the great joys living in Nashville, however, unlike the perpetual summer of my home state, is that every season brings radical change. If you don't like what's going down, just hang tight, cause in a few weeks the world will turn, and a whole new scene will take the stage.
So just about the time I'm getting really sick of the UGGs I’ve been wearing since October...here come the tiny crocus flowers announcing the imminent arrival of Something Completely Different.
SPRING! For me, no other moment holds as much creative energy and fuel. Even the name of the season speaks motion, action, motivation.
I watch the daffodils push their way up out of the dark earth, and I want to fight my way out of the heavy lethargy of hibernation and emerge with something beautiful and bright. I hear the trickling of the wet weather springs that suddenly pop out of the hillsides creating little waterfalls everywhere, and I'm inspired to my own improv of melody and rhythm. Even the trail of black ants across my kitchen counter tell me to get busy, get to work, there's something sweet to be found ahead.
For some reason, this year the sense of excitement and promise is especially keen. There's an anticipation of something good, something important, something new and a little scary but most certainly worth venturing into.
I went to church for the first time in several years last Sunday, Easter Sunday. My dear old friend, Russ Taff, invited me to sing Bill and Gloria Gaither's "I've Just Seen Jesus" as a duet with him at Saint Augustine's Episcopal Church. Russ sang the soulful harmony to "Good Good Love" on my very first country album twenty-five years ago, and we've been friends ever since. We share some common history having grown up in the church, the blessings and the traumas. And we share the daily experience of Jesus, lover of all humanity, sower of peace and forgiveness and humility, as the only unshakeable truth we have to hold onto. Becca Stevens, chaplain at St A's and founder of the powerful Magdalene House and Thistle Farms organizations for women getting off the streets, spoke poetry into every heart at that Easter service:
All we grieve
rises,
like the wildflowers
in
spring.
It's been a long cold winter, but Spring is here. I'm excited about releasing new music this year, about running my first KICKSTARTER campaign in June, about going out on the road to play shows and meet fans this fall. I'm excited about my oldest daughter taking on the wide world, my mom recovering from illness, my old neighborhood working together to stage a community Festival. I’m excited by many of the social changes moving through our culture and the challenge of choosing good leadership and the shrinking distance between vastly different human paradigms. I’m glad to be right here, right now and thankful to be sharing this journey with you. Happy Resurrection Season…