The Thing about Spring

April 16, 2024
The Thing About Spring . . . .
Beloved: 

I’m going to plant gladiolas* today, last year’s bulbs I never got in the ground.  I’ve kept them cool and dark, so I’m guessing they’ll be okay.  The daffodils and viburnum are finished and tulips are on the wane.  I keep showing neighbors a pink one that has four blooms on one stem – one of those brilliant anomalies of nature.  The lilacs are full on and have never been prettier or more fragrant.  They are my favorites of the season.  There’s a gorgeous bush beside the church front porch.
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Best of all, my old porch swing is now up in a new place.  Nothing soothes my soul like resting in a porch swing, following the news as it happens in real time on this tiny patch of planet.  No hummingbirds yet, though all my feeders are hung.  A titmouse found the pea-sized peanut butter balls I put out to draw the bluebirds close.  Compared to her body weight (0.6 oz), the vocal volume** of a titmouse is truly remarkable.  No house hunters have stopped to check out the two bluebird boxes I screwed to the cedar tree just beyond my porch.  I painted them green and blue and decorated the roofs with rainbow popsicle sticks.  Perhaps the aesthetic is too strong for bluebirds.  Chipmunks have completely taken over one downspout, so I called Jeremiah, our maintenance man, to come evict them, about which I feel slightly bad.  Slightly, in that the alternative is rainwater continuing to cascade off the roof, eventually ruining my foundation, a $20K fix for the neighbor who just had it done.  $20K is more chipmunk appreciation than I can afford.

The whole neighborhood comes alive and I feel myself more alive as well, maybe ever so slightly against my will, against my anxious wish to remain inside the darkish space of my own sadness and anxiety about what the future holds. 
But that’s the thing about spring, she will not be held back – not by the worst that people go through, the worst that people do to one another.  It’s spring in Bloomington, Ukraine, Gaza, Yemen, Sudan, and every other patch of planet this side of the equator.  A biologist or a farmer can tell it better than a preacher – no  amount of grief or war will stifle all life bursting from the ground when its time comes.  So while my to-do list is far longer than I ever come close to finishing, I do get to the porch to swing, and am filled again and again with the knowledge that Life itself brings life back from troubled times and places.  When the time is right.  Do not miss some time outside today, dear ones.  
~ peace & prayers, 
pastor annette
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*   AKA glad·i·o·lus, glad·i·o·li, glad·i·o·lus·es
** https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Black-crested_Titmouse/sounds ~ Listen to the first one, Texas/1961.  I love that this recording is 63 years old.