Spring color crests like a wave. Its peak is a relief and a celebration, made sweeter by contrast to winter. The earth becomes a wild painter of warm colors. Its annual masterpiece is drawn from a rich universal palette. Within it, it’s easy to see the art in everything. I pause to admire the painted days, before their brief tenure is gone. Inevitable growth precedes inevitable fading.

I’m grateful for gardeners who know how to guide peak color into being. I feel humbled by standing in a field of cultivated tulips, surrounded by strangers who’ve joined me in seeking it. Not knowing people’s names, such labels aren’t in the way. I feel more in touch with the essence of our grace. Also, tulips reconnect me with what I can’t see; for every color in sight, others burst forth out of view. I sense all possible shades not currently in bloom.

So it is with all living beings. Our palette of spirit is as deep as the palette of color. It manifests uniquely in each of us, vibrant but only a tiny bit of who we could be, and who others are. It’s displayed in variations in life on land, in air, under sea. It’s within air, land, and sea themselves. Spirit and color are as alive as we are. 

Color and spirit are inseparable from us. They’re an essential element of our nature, as we’re drawn from the earth’s palette into existence. We share color and spirit with those who take forms wildly different than our own. I see no line of separation between people and petals and birds and air, when we all come forward with our distinctive, related hues.

Our emergence is natural—as bound to happen as the annual rush of flowers—yet only existent because of all that’s come before. Everything up to now has led to this field of tulips, to you, to me. And already this field of tulips is preparing to fade.

I trust that the earth senses—that we sense within ourselves—when conditions are right to show our truest, deepest colors, before fading too. Blooming can be a long wait, but seasons have a wisdom of timing. Wisdom too is a color I can only partially sense. I’m grateful for wisdom I don’t yet know. I trust it waits here somewhere, a lasting friend within transient blossoms.

Color and spirit inspire my gratitude for possibility, which lifts my spirit without need for certainty. Possibility gives me the energy to work at building gratitude’s shelter for yet another day, knowing that the wilting heat will soon be coming.