On Easter, Fertility and RFPs

It’s finally a sunny, warmish day here in Vermont—please cease your cackling, all you mild climate folks—and now that Easter is upon us, we northeasternerns will be damned if we can’t finally, formally declare that Spring has arrived.

(I’m sitting beside an open door right now! With the sun pouring in! And a breeze touseling the tax report my accountant sent me recently! So I have on wool socks and sweater...minor detail.)

Religious traditions aside, this is already an auspicious occasion.

What do you think of when you think of Easter? Eggs? Bunnies? Ressurection? The Vernal Equinox? German chocolate? Jelly Beans? The Pennsylvania Dutch? Pastels? Hot Cross Buns? Not in that order? That's fine; order is irrelevant in this case. I’d like to focus on the symbols themselves. Or, rather, one of them: Ze Egg (Inspector Clouseau accent, please).

Whatever your spiritual inclination, eggs have become a part of Easter in the modern world. I think eggs, and I think birds—hey, there’s one!—and fertility. Fertility relates to pretty much everything in nature right now (bunnies, definitely), and to lots of people, too.

One time I counted the number of my friends who must have been conceived in the Spring and they outnumbered friends conceived in the Fall 2 to 1. That’s saying something. Our state of mind changes at this time of year, our way of seeing the world and relating to others changes, and our impulses change, too. Our ideas change.

Maybe we see some green in the landscape and quietly resolve to consider a situation with fresh eyes. Maybe an opportunity presents itself, and because it’s Spring and we’re not under 17 layers of clothes and we don’t have to spend 25 minutes scraping off the car, we actually consider seizing this opportunity. Maybe we understand, in a moment of surreal clarity, how short life is and how rare these chances come along. Maybe we even feel a renewed sense of hope, a sense that we could really make something of this. That we’ve got what it takes. That it might actually make a difference in our lives and in the lives of our loved ones.

It just so happens that Orton has just served up one of these opportunities on a platter, just like your Easter ham or turkey or lamb or tofurky will be served on Sunday. We’ve released a Request for Proposals for a second round of Heart & Soul communities, just in time for this season of renewal and resurrection and eggs and cute, baby, fuzzy creatures that make you want to hug them. Good thinking, right?

To help interested communities prepare their applications, we’re hosting a conference call series called Unlocking Heart & Soul—now if that doesn’t imply that the key is in your hand, I’ll be tarred and feathered—which is designed to help you understand the essential elements of our process and how you can prepare a knock-down, drag-out proposal.

It’s Spring, folks, which is why I’m going to put the screens on the windows this weekend and see some friends I haven’t seen in a long time. It’s also why I think you should take advantage of this unhatched egg of an opportunity.

Heart & Soul wants you! Join us for the call series and submit and application. The Goddess Ostara will smile on you.