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| Daffodils in my garden after the snow ©A. Rutherford |
Last week began with blossoming trees and flowering bulbs. The hyacinths and daffodils were lovely in my garden. Spring was here and my heart was singing a lilting song, that same tune that the emerging season always inspires in me as my spirit responds to the new life springing forth. Out of the deadness of winter these tender blossoms had come from ground and branch so bleak and bare that one could not believe they would contain life were it not for having experienced this same miracle year after year.
Make no mistake . . . it is a miracle we are witnessing as the seasons turn from Summer’s full verdant flowering to Autumn’s golden dying to Winter’s spare white grip on Nature. Then in the deadness of full winter when all seems grey and heavy, out of dry, seemingly lifeless branches tiny leaves begin to unfold, tender green shoots thrust themselves forth from muck and mire, and the miracle happens all over again. We call these tiny emergings “signs of life.” With hope, we gardeners look for them to reassure ourselves that we have not lost this favorite plant or that special shrub to the harshness of Winter.
Life out of deadness, a type of resurrection, a sign . . .
After several balmy days, toward the end of the week, I was shocked to see that what I thought was pear blossoms floating down was actually snow showers, which continued off and on all day! Oh no! I thought . . . what about the flowers? What will happen to Spring this year, or even the fruit crop later, as so many things had already begun to set bud. But the next day the sun came out, the flowers were smiling happily in their beds, and I learned a lesson in resilience, to be sure. We are created to be tougher than we sometimes feel we are. We just need to look for signs of Life in the deadness and dryness that sometimes surrounds us and nurture those tender shoots until they grow strong and blossom into their fullness. The miracle of resurrection is the Hope that we have been given. And we are given signs of its reality every Spring . . . watch it happen! Attend to it closely! Let the beauty of the process nurture your spirit.
Let your mind work its way slowly and thoughtfully through the following poem as a meditation on Resurrection.
What Secret Purple Wisdom
What word informs the world,
and moves the worm along in his blind tunnel?
What secret purple wisdom tells the iris edges
to unfold in frills? What juiced and emerald thrill
urges the sap until the bud resolves
its tight riddle? What irresistible command
unfurls this cloud above this greening hill,
or one more wave – its spreading foam and foil –
across the flats of sand? What minor thrust
of energy issues up from humus in a froth
of ferns? Delicate as a laser, it filigrees
the snow, the stars. Listen close – What silver sound
thaws winter into spring? Speaks clamor into singing?
Gives love for loneliness? It is this
unterrestrial pulse, deep as heaven, that folds us
in its tingling embrace, gongs in our echo hearts.
-Luci Shaw in The Green Earth: Poems of Creation
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| along the nature trail at the Huntington Museum of Art ©A.Rutherford |
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