Today it’s supposed to be 56. Yesterday it was snowing. Why is this time of year so undecided?
“Will it be the winter of despair or the spring of hope?” asked Charles Dickens in a question that transcends the weather. In a thousand different ways in a thousand different times I’ve heard the same cry of the heart. How many times have I asked, “am I going to make it?’
Punxsutawney Phil, the erstwhile groundhog in Punxsutawney, PA, saw his shadow this morning. But the bigger questions at hand are not being asked by this overgrown rodent. All he knows is that the food supply is dwindling and the sun needs to start shining.
These days we stand on the precipice of seasonal change. For some, winter was harsh with its cold and snow, wet and wind. It seems like it never ends. For years, I lived in a Wyoming climate that guaranteed five months of snow on the ground.
But when the sun broke through and temperature broke 40, it might as well have summer. Young men took their shirts off and threw Frisbees despite the mud. Dogs chased balls and mothers strolled their babies. It was winter, but it felt like spring. Hope was alive.
Dickens continued to write of in A Tale of Two Cities.
“It was the best of times, the worst of times.
It was the age of wisdom; it was the age of foolishness.It was the epoch of incredulity; It was the season of light. It was the season of Darkness “
We all live in that contrast. If not personally, we certainly experience it interrelationally.
When things are going well for me, I’m often cautious about expressing my joy. Who knows who is in the throes of despair and I don’t want to dance alone. Conversely, when darkness descends on me, I’m reticent to talk about for fear I’ll extinguish their hope.
Why is that I can endure my own despair, but I can’t really handle someone else’s hope?
We walk in a world of contrast, light and dark, good and bad, beautiful and ugly. The great philospher Arlo Guthrie once said, “If you don’t ever know the darkness, man, you’ll never really appreciate the light.”
That’s why the first bulbs of spring give such delight. We have seen the short, cold days of a long winter and we just don’t like it. The buds of promise push through to our hearts and warm us up to the thought tomorrow.
Come Spring! Come hope!
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