Читать книгу Hope’s Daughters - R. Wayne Willis - Страница 95

Do you hear what I hear? The shrieking, I mean. That is the sound of winter giving up. The dull, brown earth is surrendering its oppressive hold on us, giving up to buttercup and crocus, dandelion, forsythia, and redbud, to robins stalking and spearing earthworms in the yard, to geese piercing the sky.

Fortunate to live in a four-seasons part of the world, annually I get to cheer on the new birth. Let us raise glasses! Let us toast those deep yellows and pinks and purples, for they mean we have made it through another winter. It could have been different. Let the shrieking begin.

Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy in April of 1858, having survived another brutal winter just south of Moscow, could not contain his jubilation in a letter to his aunt and confidant Alexandra:

It’s spring! It is so good to be alive on this earth, for all good people and even for such as I. Nature, the air, everything is drenched in hope, future, a wonderful future. The springtime has such a powerful effect on me that I sometimes catch myself imagining I am a plant that has just opened and spread its leaves among all the other plants and is going to grow up simply, peacefully and joyfully on the good Lord’s earth. When this happens, such a fermentation, purification, and orchestration goes on inside me that anyone that has not experienced it himself could not imagine it himself. Away with all the old worn-out things . . . to the devil with them all! Make way for this wonderful plant that is filling out its buds and growing in the spring.76

“Everything is drenched in hope.” Or, in the words of scripture: “Winter is past . . . flowers cover the earth, it’s time to sing.”77

Hallelujah! Amen!