The Cares of Tomorrow Can Wait

In a single week, almost everything can soften. I just saw it happen in the woods outside my window.

After a long spring that felt like an even longer winter, our mountains suddenly hit a stretch of heat that has washed the entire landscape in green. In the span of just a week, every single tree in the cove where I live leafed out entirely. It was as if the roots had conferred with each other, in wind-warmed whispers, to pass on the message. Each morning I watched as the tiny fingerprints of the oak leaves became palm-long and then handsized, and finally blended into the rest of the emerald cacophony.

It’s amazing how quickly a softening can come in— the angelic feeling of life floating back in through the open windows of your being.

Just a few weeks ago the canopy was as it had been for months— bare, open, whistling with solitude and space. And then, everything changed. The long-distance views from my porch became all tender-green and fluttering leaves. The butterflies hatched, and I watched them catch the breezes up to the tops of the trees. The spring birds returned, pouring the harp of their voices into the understory. And my home, which once sat on the lip of an open hollow, is now held in a basket of green.

There is a space, between all great seasons and shifts, where things soften for a while. Where you are free of where you have been, but not yet crossed the threshold into what is to come. A time when the old worries ebb but the new roads are still mirage-like in the future. Moments when the growing of things just becomes so undeniably harmonious— all you can do is sit for a while, and become a part of the singing.

Lately I’ve been listening to the traditional Celtic ballad “Come By The Hills” on repeat, a sweet ditty that is an ode to the free joy of being in wild places, and the willingness to put down your burdens for a day to simply enjoy. To be “in joy,” alongside all other living beings. To celebrate our aliveness, together.

The song feels like an old enchantment— one that lures you to inhabit a barrel-chested trust in the perfect timing of things. A spell that asks you to use the brawny muscles of hope and bury your worries into the soft ground. To tilt your face to the clear-filled skies and announce— “the cares of tomorrow can wait, ‘til this day is done.”

For today, the world is simply too full of song. The trees sway in time, the flowers nod to a hidden rhythm and even the wind seems in tune. On days like these, newly washed in green, the whole world is a lullaby. And you are being sung, not into sleep, but into a softer, more forgiving place inside of things. An inner world where everything can be okay, at least for today.

Sometimes the world wants us to work. To move through the things that are hard, to build nests from mud and the discards of our life. To push stones until they roll away from the living roots of things.

But other times, the world simply wants us to sing. To fill our throats with the sweetness of the breeze, the gratitude upwelling, and be at peace.

May this email today be an invitation for you today. To come by the hills, and visit the places that are free. To put honey in your tea. And wait to make dinner until you’ve watched the last pink of the sunset. To hum as you walk to get the mail. And skip as you head back home.

To be like a bird in midday. Singing simply because it fills you with sweetness. Let yourself be carried away by light and tender green and winds that sound your name. And allow the cares of tomorrow to wait, until this soft day is done.