Life in Bloom...
"To everything there is a season..." so says the writer of Ecclesiastes in a well-known, oft-quoted passage. And I usually trust that to be true. But then there is my Christmas cactus...which for the nine or so years I have had it has faithfully and stubbornly bloomed about four weeks before the aforementioned time...bursting forth in all its glory at Thanksgiving. Every year. Without fail. As I looked at it today, counting the many blooms and the many more buds- in a few more days it will be covered with blossoms- I found myself thinking about this whole "season" thing. We use that saying to comfort ourselves, I think, with the notion, the belief, that things unfold as they should, when they should, in the overall scheme of things. And in the world of nature, at least, that is most often true. Summer follows spring follows winter follows fall, and so it goes, year after year...a promise of sorts to which we tightly hold and in which we find great ...