Wednesday was a gift, wasn’t it?
Blue skies, sunshine, and 64 degrees (maybe more where you live).
When I “checked in” on Facebook LIVE at 9:00 that’s what everybody was talking about. “What a beautiful day!” “It’s going to be a great day!” “Try to get outside today!”
I did try to get outside. I tried to get out every chance I got. And every time I did the warmth and sunshine made me feel more hopeful, more optimistic. I began to feel like this endless pandemic might actually come to an end. I began to think we could come back to church again, and go out to eat again, and spend time with friends again. Every person I passed as I walked through the neighborhood seemed to be in an exceptionally good mood.
It wasn’t just the warmth or the sunshine; it was the promise of spring. I told Christy on one of those walks, “You can almost hear the ground thawing and the air smells, what’s the word? fecund.” That was only a guess, but it turned out to be a good one. When I looked it up later I found that fecund means “producing or capable of producing an abundance of offspring or new growth.” Yes. That’s how the air smelled: Fecund.
I remember counseling with a woman once in DC who was depressed. It was February, and a cold February at that. She sat in my office on a gray day and wept until she had used up all the tissues in the box I had given her. Finally I said, “Do you know that apartment building just up Massachusetts Avenue, the Boston House?” She nodded. It was right around the corner from the church. “Well, every spring there are a thousand tulips in front of that building. It’s one of the most beautiful, colorful sights in the city. And right now those tulip bulbs are down in that frozen ground. But when it gets a little warmer, when we get a little rain and sunshine, those bulbs are going to start pushing up their slender green stalks until they break through the ground. And then they’re going to keep on pushing upward, toward the sun, until those fat buds burst into bloom, until those silky petals unfurl, until all you can see is tulips everywhere. Maybe right now your heart is like one of those tulip bulbs, frozen in the ground, but spring is coming, and everything’s going to change.” A few months later she reported back that I had been right, that she was now engaged, and springtime was “bustin’ out all over”!
That’s how I felt on Wednesday: hopeful, optimistic, as if everything were about to change. I know I may not feel that way when I have to slog through another wet, cold, gray day, but it doesn’t change the fact that spring is coming.
I hope you feel it, too.
Jim
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