What May Asks of Us

There is a particular demand that spring makes of us, and it is not the demand I would have expected.

I expected it to feel like relief — the end of the long grey months, the return of warmth and length to the days. And it is relief, partly. But it is also something else. Spring requires participation in a way that winter does not. Winter allows you to stay where you are. It asks very little. It wraps you in the legitimate excuse of cold and darkness and says: you may rest here.

May does not allow this. May arrives and the world begins doing things, and there is a quiet expectation that you will do things too. That you will not stay in the same configuration you were in during the long season of waiting. That something will be planted, even if you cannot yet see what it is.

I have been sitting with a question this week: what has winter been holding that May is now asking me to bring into the light?

For some women it will be a creative project set aside in the heaviness of autumn. For others a difficult conversation postponed month after month. For others a tender, vulnerable hope that has been kept very quiet because the season for it did not seem to have arrived.

May does not force these things. But it creates a kind of ambient permission for them. The world is opening, and it seems to say: you may also open.

Ecclesiastes reminds us that there is a time for everything — a time to plant, a time to uproot. Discerning which time it is requires attention to the season, inner and outer. May has its particular qualities, and they are not accidental. The same God who orders the seasons is ordering the season of your life.

What has been waiting for May?