Under a Desert Sky: Death is Always Prelude to a Resurrection

dried ocotillo petals on the ground

desert wildflower seeds in a hands

three luminaria bags from Relay for Life

The early morning air still holds the chill of a desert morning in late spring. The sun is warm like a blanket I want to pull up to my chin and snuggle down deep into the not yet awake.

Mollie's tail wags up dust as she waits for the leash to be attached to her collar before we hike down the trail on South Mountain.

The mourning dove laments the only song she knows as I pass the shriveled flame of the ocotillo, the orange petals tossed on the dirt like dried up embers on the packed earth.

The heavy deadheads of the brittlebush drag the flower faces downward to the ground, while the brown, curled stem of the heliotrope waves in the slight breeze, no hint of the purple flowers of a few weeks ago.

"The grass withers and the flower fades," the Old Book says.  

I know it is true as I witness the fact that the desert has nearly spent all its yearly currency of springtime.

Only a few coins remain. A scattering of pale yellow blooms on a palo verde. A single lavender flower on a desert willow.

A quail on a rock outcropping stands silhouetted against a gray clouded sky. His plume bobs forward as he sings the first syllable of his song. Kwah.Kwah.

Is he a lookout? Is he performing part of his mating call? I am not sure.

I stop to remove a burr from Mollie's rusty coat, along with a dusting of brittlebush seeds. Her long fur makes her an unwitting mail carrier of packages--which is also part of the spending of the desert in springtime as the dried up plants prepare for future generations to spill out--promises of a spring we cannot yet see.

I find myself in need of the reminder of a future blooming.

I need reminding in the dried-up places of my soul upon hearing the news of two more women who died from breast cancer in a cancer support group to which I belong, bringing the number to seven this month alone

.Dee. Rose. Rachel. Lauren. Jessica. Lisa. Michelle.

(Rose, I will always remember your excitement in capturing pieces of your story during a writing class with me.)

I need a breathing on the shriveled flames of remembering as we placed our lights next to the decorated bags of our parents and our children's grandparents during the luminaria ceremony at Relay for Life.

Mom. Dad. Grandpa. Grandma.

"The grass withers and the flowers fade," the Old Book says, but the sentence does not end there. It continues:

"But the Word of our God stands forever."

The end of springtime in the desert is not only about withering grass and fading flowers. The end of spring in the desert is also about returning life held by Someone who stands forever. In His hands, death is always prelude to a resurrection--the promise of a future blooming.