Springing to Life
We all live within the framework of time and space. Life seems to carry more joy and purpose when we allow those framing gifts to set our pace.
A springtime haze has settled across our property, a mixture of pollen and dust kicked into the atmosphere by my trusty rototiller. The air is alive with birdsong and bees buzzing past me as I sit atop my Massey Ferguson. It’s been several months since I’ve felt the desire to accomplish anything. I’m pregnant. But, in sweet mercy, the morning sickness has faded just as the peak planting season has come into full focus.
Last year, my overalls, boots, and ball cap had me dressed like an old man. Now, I walk like one, complete with a waddle, a grimace, and what looks like a beer-belly pushing the load limits on my far-too-slim overalls. I must have bought them in the children’s department.
New life bursts forth all around me. Tulips push through the dirt, a volunteer purple hyacinth appears despite my planting nothing of the sort, and the daffodils delicately smile atop their grassy perches.
As a society that has largely moved away from agrarian lifestyles, I wonder how much we miss by no longer aligning our life with the earth’s rhythms. Some ancient calendars originally aligned with the New Year beginning at the spring equinox. Does our Gregorian calendar push us to strive for fruit outside the proper season? What, after all, feels new about the dead of winter? Is it necessary to feel we must celebrate major holidays, join a gym, change our life rhythm, and “get motivated” when signs of life on earth have gone into hiding? Or could winter be a God-ordained time of rest? Like my old pastor who said, “Sundays are for naps,” some times exist for the sole purpose of taking pause.
When I lived in South Carolina, every winter I walked past a particular cherry tree that was desperately trying to leaf out before it’s time. It only managed a paltry covering of green here and there. I assumed it must have felt more heat reflecting the blacktop than that of its kin, planted farther away. The fabricated surroundings drowned out the voice of the earth. Once spring arrived, this tree languished while its counterparts burst open with cotton-candy blooms.
In trying to push a season, the confused ornamental missed its cue. Every year, it exhausted itself at the wrong time, so that when the right season came, it had nothing left to give.
Without proper rest, or even death in some cases, a vibrant life cannot be. In my case, without exhaustion, toilet-hugging, and gag reflexes, there would be no tiny kicks, ears, or heartbeat. It seems that pain is often essential to growth.
Life has its particular seasons, from parenting toddlers, to wrapping our arms around a new job, to moving to foreign countries or neighborhoods. Obviously, these movements cannot always reflect the weather forecast. But there is “a season for everything,” and there is a proper way to embrace that truth.
I’m still atop my tractor, looking over my backyard and finishing a few vocal warm-ups. Before I go into my studio, I’m called into the woods by the trademark pounding of a pileated woodpecker. I know of no other bird who can make a sound as loud as John Henry swinging his hammer. Just before an ill-timed sneeze overtakes me, I spot him. Luckily, the crow-sized redhead is making such a racket himself, he doesn’t hear me. I notice his chosen quarry is a dead maple. Even in its death, the rotten tower offers the bird a source of life, and he looks nothing less than invigorated.
I smile and watch him, then trudge back to the house, grateful for this season of movement, appreciating the previous season of stillness, and trusting that, when the vegetables languish in the late August heat, I can let the garden shrivel while I go rock a baby boy.
… and all these things shall be added to you. Essential things that sustain us. Plus things that make us useful.
We are sowers and the soil.