Spring Fever, Mud Season, and Living in Harmony with the Seasons

It is a bit early for spring fever.  I drove through a snowstorm getting Eileen to the hospital the night our second child was born on April 9th.  Ever since, my family anticipates an early April snow.  Nonetheless, spring fever has hit me! After spending the winter months staring out windows at gloomy gray sky, leafless trees and a snowy windswept landscape, when the sun shines in clear blue skies like today, and the crocus emerge in the flower beds, my spirit lifts and my heart beats a bit faster.  I relish getting outside and seeing the earth reawaken from its winter slumber. How about you?  My muscles are still a little sore from raking my lawn last week.  My flower beds are still waiting to be cleared of leaves which have found a resting place there  for the winter.  I plan to spade my vegetable garden soon and get it ready to plant some early snap peas, greens and radishes.  The ground is still too cold, but it's time to get ready.  I long to get my hands in the dirt again.  Our Hope Garden committee has been planning for a new season.  We have applied for some grants, which we hope will enable us to employ couple of garden interns for the growing season.

There is a natural rhythm here on the 42nd latitude to living in harmony with the seasons.  Things come to life in spring, grow in summer, produce and die off in late summer and fall, then the soil rests in winter.  However, we modern and postmodern people refuse to bow to such a rhythm.  It's go, go, go, all the time.  Produce, produce, produce!  But God did not design the world that way.  As the philosopher wrote in Ecclesiastes, "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven." There are seasons for planning, planting, growing, harvesting, and for dying, recycling, resting, lying fallow, contemplating, and dreaming again.  There are natural emotions that accompany these seasons: laughing and weeping, dancing and mourning, hating and loving (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8).

When I moved to upstate New York, I was told, "Oh, the pace of life slows down here in winter."  Huh!  That is not what I experienced!  We simply had that much more work to do muscling our way through winter contending with the cold, handling the snow.  The only slow down I remember was during the blizzard of '93.  All roads in the county were closed by emergency order for A DAY.  The next day all was up and running again.  We want to live life on our terms.  Wrestle climate to our will.  We plow and salt roads to keep things moving.  In snow country the departments of transportation mount huge snow blowers on trucks that throw snow a hundred feet in the air to cut through walls of snow.

I also learned there that you can't get from winter wonderland to spring gardens without slogging through mud season. There is no way to avoid it.  School hallways there were lined with mud boots this time of year.  I preached a Holy Week sermon there using that imagery.  You can't get to Easter joy without slogging through the mess of our lives in Holy Week.  But we try.  We path over our emotions, failures, sins like our driveways and parking lots, cement our sidewalks so we escape the mud.  Housing developments sprout up in what once were forests and fields and wetlands which once captured and let the rain and melt off waters soak in.  And then we wonder why streets flood and rivers overflow their banks.  Likewise, it makes me wonder about our society's proclivity to depression and violence at the very same time as society sets aside religious rituals, rituals which address the messes of their lives.  Yet still, there remains a gospel word of repentance, forgiveness, new life, resurrection if we will hear it.

By living in harmony with the seasons one allows for fallow time of rest and renewal, contemplating and planning in one's life.  And one can revel in a season of new creation.  The days are get longer.  There is daylight after dinner for evening activity and play.  We begin to hear the crack of the bat and chatter on ball fields, and see neighbors out walking their dogs.  Community comes to life, for a season.