The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind

A flock of geese takes flight, wings flapping into a wispy sky of lavender and peach and periwinkle.  My eyes drop down to a mother and her daughter, cozy in autumn coats running in the open field. They stop to pick handfuls of seeded dandelions, and my eyes drop down to the grass.  I sit on a rock that holds memories for me.  The sky gains intensity, and I gaze out at the sea of dandelions.  They are intricate – like living snowflakes, hovering above the ground, fluffy, delicate, and wonderfully translucent.

The sky gains intensity, and my fingers and toes tingle with the cold as golden sunbeams cease to filter through the leaves, and autumn’s crispness fills the air.  Alone in the field now, I gaze out at the seeded flowers, and I’m filled with an urge to run frantically from flower to flower, picking every one, making a wish, and taking a giant breath to attempt to blow all the seeds off in one go.

Would I make a different wish for every one? Or would I wish the same thing over and over and over, blending inspiration and determination, maybe even desperation as I long to see the wish come true.

My imagination jumps from stem to stem. What if all the dandelions, or really, all the living things around me were more than opportunities for wishes? What if they each represented a spoken prayer?

Father and son walk freely through the field.  The son chooses a flower and gently picks it up.  Eyes sparkling with emotion, he passes it into the father’s hands.  The Spirit blows and the seeds are caught in a graceful wind as they twist and turn and soar and fall back down to earth.  I think about my prayers – my heart flying out, not in a planned and careful manor, but just as it is.  I think about how surprising answered prayer can be.  How it turns up where you least expect it, and sometimes after you’ve stopped hoping for it.  It doesn’t always look like what I had imagined – but are the flowers or the trees planted in perfectly spaced rows in an undisturbed forest?

The city lights come on.  I pick two dandelions as I walk back to my car.  Closing my eyes, I thank my Father that when I see His handiwork, I can choose to see rocks and trees and grass and flowers – but he’s made it so that instead I can see and touch and know HIM.  I blow and spin around as I watch the seeds of one dandelion float into the evening.  I cradle the other in my hand as I walk to my car.

The wind blows.