On Sunday it was sunny and warm, flowers were starting to bloom, the birds were singing. Yesterday the high thin clouds move in, and a south east wind blew damp and chilly across the harbor; stopped any more flower buds from opening. It rained all night, and this morning dawned gray and wet and dismal; the only birds that were out were the seagulls. By this afternoon the sun had come out, and it was cold with a brisk breeze out of the west; felt like winter again.

We’re supposed to get snow tonight, rain tomorrow, and it’s supposed to be warm and sunny again on Thursday. It’s turning into a typical New England spring week: bouncing back and forth between wintry weather and warm weather. After the warm sun over the weekend, I felt drained of energy by the sudden change to overcast skies and rain this morning — all morning in the office, we were talking about how we all felt slow and stupid. Then the cold wind this afternoon dampened my energy further, brought me to a low unthinking state of being: I just wanted to take a nap.

Yet tonight a church committee meeting turned from routine business discussions into a long conversation about reincarnation, God, what happens after death; we all wound up talking about people close to us who had died, and what their deaths had meant to us. It was an amazing conversation, a richly religious conversation. The uncertainties and vagaries of the weather seem to have opened up this conversation for us: and why not? We respond to the world around us in ways we pretend not to notice. But truth has a way of bursting in unexpectedly, like spring weather in this part of New England.