It is suddenly warm across the south. As I "greeted this day" (in the language of Liz Wessel's lovely weekend essay) I was startled to find something strange in our February garden.
Atop green shoots, buds are forming. Nearby, weeds arrive as unwelcome as Cinderella's sisters.
There is no more common or powerful metaphor for hope than spring. When it arrives early, we almost hesitate to believe its promise for fear winter will charge back and trample our trust.
In April of 2004, my brother-in-law, dying of cancer, faced his last spring. I wondered if it was painful. "I've seen lots of springs," he told my sister, as if one more might not matter. But, such responses often mask a sadness within. All who Love, love spring.
Elsewhere in our garden, my wife has planted a reminder of something even more hopeful than spring itself. "Friends are the flowers in the garden of life," the sign reads.
For those of us lucky to have dear friends, we know those relationships have no season. Friends need no springtime sun and rain to nurture their Love into being.
The demands placed on full-time caregivers mean that most spend more time with co-workers than they do with their family. How fortunate when co-workers become our friends as well as our colleagues.
We may even spawn a kind of friendship with our patients, most of whom spend just a few days with us. Length of acquaintance may not always be the sole determinate of a quality encounter. We can meet many new friends every day – the cashier, the store clerk, or, as happened to me recently, the woman sitting next to me on the plane. During our two hour flight, we struck up a terrific sense of knowing as we exchanged stories.
As I de-planed in Nashville, she headed on to Chicago. It is very unlikely that I will see her again. Yet, that brief, plane-ride friendship was a spring surprise.
Sometimes, friends come from even more unexpected places. On some occasions, people I once thought of as enemies have since become friends.
Though I once thought otherwise, I now believe this: Love knows no enemies.
How will you "greet this day?" What new friends will appear?
-Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
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