Written by Daniel Bahner

Spring is my favorite season. As a Taurus, I am pretty biased. I love Spring for lots of reasons: longer and warmer days, flowers blooming, the frequent sightings of robins, and the general feeling of hope that is reborn after enduring another Winter. But the true reason why I love Spring is because it is messy, and it teaches me that I can be messy too as I grow. Maybe you have never thought about Spring as messy, so think about it; for every warm, glorious blue sky Spring day, there are ones of cold and rain, even snow! There is mud, wind, and frost. 50°F feels relative to the temperature the day before. And yet, in the midst of this messiness, growth is always happening and we are still progressing towards Summer. And this messy, non-linear trajectory connects every other living creature on this Earth.

As I write this from my home in Chicago, Illinois, I am deeply reminded of this as I experience a truly messy Spring week in mid-April, both within and without. What started with warm, sunny days mirroring feeling confident and hopeful, ended in personal disappointment and a rainy, muddy 50°F weekend. As someone with diagnosed mental health disorders, the typical ebbs and flow of life are exacerbated by depression and anxiety, which I often compare to inner storms. In the storm, I often hear howls of “you are doing it wrong”, “something is wrong with you”, “things will never change”. And it is in these moments, when these shadow forces threaten to blow me off course and darken my path, I ground myself in Spring’s reality. That these periods of non-linear progress are not only to be expected, but the rain, wind, frost, and mud are necessary for and expected during growth.

In these harder moments, when I am able to create the mental space I need to grant compassion and grace to myself, I can focus on gratitude. Gratitude reminds me that I am alive and the latest member of an unbroken chain of ancestors that make up the human family tree. I am reminded that I am descended from working class immigrants from Western and Eastern Europe, of Christian and Jewish traditions, who faced hardship I will never face due to the lives they lived without our modern technological conveniences. I wonder: what practices did they use to stay grounded and resilient? Could they help me too? In this exploration I have returned to spiritual practices that White Supremacist Capitalism has worked to disconnect me from—the diverse practices and customs of our ancestors.

White Supremacy coerces those who do not fit the dominant customs of American whiteness to assimilate in exchange for the privileges that it grants. It attempts to control every force of nature for exploitation and dominance. To sit in the messiness of life in the face of these systems feels like a reclamation of a portion of my humanity that the construct of American Protestant whiteness erased from my identity. To stand in my Truth as a white Jewish Queer femme man on this Earth, living authentically and consciously aware of the ways in which I need to decolonize my mind of whiteness in order to act in solidarity with movements for our collective liberation. 

A seed cannot grow into a thriving plant with sunshine alone. Spring rain storms are just as vital. In mixing with the soil, water helps the roots absorb the necessary nutrients of the Earth and grow grand leaves to respire. It is in this alchemy of earth, air, water, and the fiery sun that the growth happens. All are necessary ingredients for growth just as all of my life experiences are. The hard, easy, joyful, sad, and everything in between connects me to every human that has endured the same. So what does that look like? Sometimes that looks like feeling really confident one day and the next, facing an anxiety storm that threatens to bring a frost to stop the growth I have already made. And maybe I will slow down a bit to endure that storm, but I will keep growing, because that is what the divine spark, our soul within us, inspires us to do.  And it is in these moments of groundedness in Spring’s wisdom that I can hear what that Spark is guiding me to do next. 

Moving into the rest of the Spring season, I hope that we can both remember to embrace the messiness of growth but to also seek out support that we need. As Tracie and April reminded me in a recent episode of our Jews Talk Racial Justice podcast, just as the spring shoots need structures like trellises to thrive or the saplings whose roots join those of other trees in the nutrient-sharing web beneath the surface, we, too, need support. For me, that looks like therapy sessions twice a month and being transparent with my friends and loved ones about what I am struggling with.

I invite you to reflect and comment below: how are you getting support in the growing seasons of your life? What are the ways you can relate to the messiness of Spring? And no matter what that trajectory of growth looks like, no matter how messy, may it lead towards a thriving Summer. 

How are you thinking about the messiness of spring? Let us know in the comments below!