From The Innkeepers

The “Plug Ugliness” of Early Spring Is Not All There Is
April 2025 Blog

I ran across a description about this time of year on the Gratefullness.Org website the other day. It struck me as so appropriate because we’ve had Spring trying hard to get underway, but it is having relatively little success doing so. Since the calendar flipped over to the new season we did have some warmer weather but it was followed by a weekend of four inches of snow. Then this last weekend it was just simply dark and rainy-by Monday morning we had about two inches of rain and because the ground is hardly starting to thaw, it sits like a muddy, sloppy mess all over the yard, especially on the lower lying areas on the side of the house by the pond. But even this has its usefulness. Here is what Parker Palmer had to say about it on the Gratefulness quote of the day on March 20th:
“There is a hard truth to be told: before Spring becomes beautiful, it is plug ugly, nothing but mud and muck…But in that muddy mess, the conditions for rebirth are being created.”

We are in the plug ugly stage, no doubt about it. I take much hope and encouragement that even though our part of the world looks like this now, that much is happening beneath the surface, in the darkness of the underground. With the eventual warmth of the sun, what is being created underground will show us its face. We are creatures of the light, after all, and
Spring is a time of new beginnings facilitated by the return of light celebrated on the vernal equinox.

But sometimes we lack the courage to dig down beneath the mucky surface of things and enter our lives fully, committing to living out of the fullness of the gifts we have been given. Sometimes we are blind to the opportunities we have to grow, and we get stuck in the muddiness of our routines, and we miss the challenges for further growth. New beginnings take courage. We are always on our way out from some sort of darkness be it the underground expansion of our soul’s root system, or the fullness of our own flourishing once we break through the mud layers of our early springtime lives. Paradoxically, we are not strangers to darkness, while at the same time being capable of welcoming and embracing the light. In the plant world it’s called “phototropism” where the living plant in its growth pattern reveals that it is always bending toward the light.

When the fine, warm, sunny days of spring do finally come, be grateful for all the rebirth happening around and within us. When spring flowers and budding fragrant trees awaken our dulled senses, be grateful for the patterns of new life sprouting both in outer and inner worlds.
If you experience the flourishing of the world around you this month, take a moment of gratitude for being able to witness this experience yet one more time in the span of a relatively short human life.

Many blessings be yours in this new season,
Marcia, Pat, Sharon, and Ryan
Keepers of the Rustic Gate