The liturgical calendar has shifted. Easter is behind us. The longing of Advent won't beckon us for some months. We've settled into what the church calls Ordinary Time -- not ordinary as in unremarkable, but ordinary as in counted: the 1st Sunday after Easter, the 2nd, the 3rd, etc. The weeks that ask us simply to be present to what God is working among us.

I have been thinking about how underrated that is. It is a good season to pay attention to what is actually happening around us.

We have said goodbye to some beloved people lately. The grief is real, and it doesn't wrap up neatly because the calendar moved on. At the same time, the farmers around us are putting seed in the ground, an act of almost irrational hope when you think about it. You bury something and trust that the earth will do what earth does. Endings and beginnings, happening at the same time, in the same season, on the same roads we travel every day.

I find myself wondering what seeds I am burying right now, what I am trusting the season to grow in its own time. I'm carrying some things I'm working through, a place where my own thinking is still unfinished. I'm guessing you are too, Reader. It's an important part of ordinary time. The unresolved thing you are tending. The conversation you are still having with yourself. The seed not yet showing above the soil.

Ordinary time doesn't demand resolution. It just asks for presence.

Whatever you are burying right now -- grief, questions, unfinished things -- you are not burying it alone. We are all putting something in the ground this season, and trusting. That is an act of profound faith, even when it doesn't feel like one. The seed doesn't know it's a seed. It just does what seeds do -- surrenders to the dark, waits, and stretches toward the light. I think that's what ordinary time is asking of us. Not to have it figured out. Just to be present and stretch toward the light.

My wish for you this week, Reader, is that you are gentle with yourself about what is still unfinished, still underground, still becoming. You are not behind. You are in a season, and the season is doing its work. Soon you will see life poking through what was once barren and before you know it, the fruit of that growth will abound. That's the fiLLLed life.

Live a fiLLLed life, Melissa