Against All Odds

Spring is here.

There are robins hopping on the lawn, buds are swelling on the trees, and the spring peeper frogs have started to fill the air with their chorus of trills, looking for mates. The sandhill cranes have returned, building a nest in the marsh nearby; every evening their cries sound over the house as they fly off to the field for their evening feeding. Spears of green are pushing their way up from the soil, and the first crocuses are blooming.

It's lovely, as it is every year - but this year, every time I see another sign of spring, for the first time in my life, I'm furious.

How dare there be spring, in these times? Doesn't the earth care?

It's absurd, I know. Spring is just a time of year. But this year, the signs of growth and new life don't seem to have anything to do with us. Spring feels heartless, as if the world is moving on, oblivious to our pain and turmoil. The world really doesn't know or care that our hearts are breaking.

About six weeks ago I started to write a piece about spring. It's so full of new life, I said - a time of hope and new beginnings. Then our world fell apart, and none of that makes any sense to me any more. Now I find myself glaring out the window at a green and busy world that seems to have nothing to do with our new and fearful reality.

Finally I sat down and did some hard thinking, and I suddenly came to a realization. Spring isn't something to watch and appreciate, and it's not just a pretty show. Spring is an act of defiance. It's life flinging itself at death.

Spring isn't gentle - it's hard muscles and callouses and sweat and the pure struggle to survive another year. Spring is working hard to build nests, find a mate, raise a family. Spring is the soil warming, ready for the hard work of planting and tending. Spring is seeds quivering to life in the darkness underground, pushing to the surface to find the sun, budding and blooming and turning to the light. Spring is a scrawny little bird in an egg that pecks away hour after hour until it finally pushes its way out into a world it's never known.

We may feel lost and fearful and hopeless, but nature doesn't know despair. Every living thing holds the wisdom of survival and hope in its very genes. All the plants and animals around us know what they have to do. Plants know to dig their roots deep, to turn toward the sun and send their seeds far and wide to ensure the survival of their kind. Animals know to find a mate, build a nest, raise their young and stay strong and healthy. And deep down, we know, too.

Life keeps going on, not in spite of us, but with us, and we are called to choose, in these times, whether or not to join in the struggle to survive.

Choose life. Choose hope. Throw your heart into the future. Wait and work and wait some more. Plant the seeds for a harvest we can only imagine and may never see ourselves. Like humans have done countless times over the years, after war and plague and heartbreak have knocked them to the ground, let's choose to pick ourselves up and keep moving on.

And as we struggle through these dark days, whether in houses bursting with children or looking from lonely windows, let's remember this. Whether you're living in a penthouse or a cardboard shack under a bridge, we're all looking down the same road, and we've got to get there together. And every single thing we do to protect both those we love and those we will never know is another seed planted for that harvest we hope for, another defiant call into the darkness. We're not beaten.

So in these perilous times, I offer you this: a seed, deep underground, pushing its way through the darkness towards the light. I give you an unfurling leaf, the call of birds, the steady patter of spring rain outside your window. I give you an egg warmed beneath a nesting bird, and the fluttering heart within. Hold it in your mind. If you listen closely, you can hear it tapping its way toward tomorrow.