Space in our Souls

It’s been a long winter, and this week’s snow was a less-than-welcome sign that spring hasn’t yet pushed Old Man Winter out of the way. Thanks to our granddaughter, the lovely Madelyn Simone, I’ve seen the Frozen movie quite a few times, and as I scraped the ice off the windshield on Wednesday morning, I wondered if Elsa’s spell on Arendelle had extended its icy fingers to Ashland.

I’m disappointed I’ll be out of town on May 23 when the Downtown Walk-In Movie presents the sing-a-long version of Frozen, with the snowflake bouncing above the words. But maybe we’ll be able to watch Elsa, Anna and Olaf at the Kroc Center’s Movie Under the Stars on July 12^th. I guarantee it – there won’t be any snow on that date.

While Elsa claimed that the cold never bothered her anyway, I for one am more than ready for spring to come to stay, not to flirt with us for a few days and then play hide and seek. With John Denver, I’m ready to open up my ears, “and hear the breezes say, everything that’s cold and gray has gone.”

Maybe spring has been so late in its arrival because it’s been waiting for Easter. Last year Easter was on March 31, a bit sooner on the calendar, and in 2016, it will be as early as March 27. I’m afraid we may be wearing winter coats with our Easter bonnets that year.

I had to research why the date changes and how it is selected, and I discovered that the Council of Nicea (which met in 325 A.D.), set the date of Easter as the Sunday following the paschal full moon, which is the full moon that falls on or after the vernal (spring) equinox. Wouldn’t it have been easier if they had  chosen the third Sunday in April instead? Of course, had they done that, Easter could have conflicted with the great USA Tax Day on the 15^th of April. (That is another column, hopefully after a successful intervention by Procrastinators Anonymous prior to April 15, 2015.)

As much as we greet Easter as the ultimate sign of spring, those who follow a prophet from Galilee hold the days of Holy Week as the most significant in the calendar of faith. As such they also recognize the conflicting emotions experienced by believers during Holy Week and Resurrection Sunday, with its desperate sorrow and overwhelming joy. As the faithful gather in various expressions of worship during these days, those emotions are awakened by the songs of the passion of Christ, by the celebration of the sacrament of communion, and by the remembrance of the events of Jerusalem and Golgotha. As First United Methodist’s pastor Michael Namy reminded those gathered in worship on Maundy Thursday, Christians are powerfully shaped by the events of Holy Week as we “allow space in our souls in the present to be stirred by the Spirit of God.”

The liturgy and music of Holy Week help to draw us into that space. Many years ago, Larry and I attended a Tenebrae Service on Good Friday night. Known as a service of shadows, that particular evening ended as the light was extinguished and nails were pounded into a cross. We walked out in silence, into a world waiting in an in-between time. Jerusalem Jackson Greer describes it like this: “On Holy Saturday I do my best to live in that place, that wax-crayon place of trust and waiting. Of accepting what I cannot know. Of mourning what needs to be mourned. Of accepting what needs to be accepted. Of hoping for what seems impossible.”

We allow space in our souls for the holy through silence, through ritual, through liturgy, and through community. Perhaps in these hours of Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday, before we dig into the marshmallow peeps and chocolate bunnies, we can allow the space in our souls to be stirred once again by the promise of faith and the gift of new life.

 

A Purple Carpet

As I put the recycling on the curb this morning, I stared at our front lawn with amazement. The grass has been green for a few weeks now, with three trims already this spring, but today, our front yard was carpeted with purple. Hundreds of wild violets had sprung up overnight, joined by the bright yellow of their dandelion sisters, and I am absolutely delighted! Those April showers really were raining violets!

My husband doesn’t share my delight, however, for the lawn perfectionist I’m married to expects to see green, not purple and yellow. How can I find a way to sabotage the lawnmower for a few days so I can enjoy the kiss of color Mother Nature spread across our lawn?

Spring has also brought a parade of ants to our kitchen counter and office window ledge. I’m not quite as welcoming to them as I am to the violets, but they have been fascinating to watch for a few seconds before I send them to the Great Beyond. I’ve even seen a few trying to drag away the corpse of one of their siblings – I’m not sure what they planned to do with the body, but I didn’t give them a chance to express either their grief or cannibalistic tendencies. Since I don’t want them in my food or crawling up my arm, I’ve become an ant-buster, banishing them from my home with a vengeance.

While  spraying the ledges and squashing the wandering ants, I catch myself humming a few bars of The Ants Go Marching One by One song, a favorite of the lovely Madelyn Simone. At age 3, she’s at the stage where she gets fixated on a favorite song (The Ants), story (The Napping House) or movie (Wreck It Ralph). On our trip back to her house in Canton last week, we sang along with the Ants song nineteen times. Yes, I counted.

It’s been twenty years since I spent much time with a three-year-old, and I am seeing the world through a new set of eyes. Ants are fascinating friends, as are rocks, puddles, and tiny violets. A piece of ABC gum stuck to the supermarket floor demands an investigation, while bubbles dancing in the sunshine captivate our granddaughter for a long, long time. In her concentration, singing the same song or ‘reading’ the same book over and over again, she becomes familiar with one thing, not bombarded with the multitude of daily sound-bites that multiply faster than the violets or the ants.

I am learning some marvelous lessons as I sense the world through Madelyn’s eyes. I found a quote by Walt Streightiff who tells us there are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child – there are seven million wonders. I tried to find him on the internet without success, but I’m convinced he must be a grandparent to know that. He’s absolutely correct – everything Madelyn sees begs to be touched, everything she touches demands to be explored, and everything she explores is to be regarded with awe and wonder. As Jodi Picoult describes it, “kids think with their brains cracked wide open,” a perfect description of wonder.

So where have we gone wrong as we’ve grown into adulthood? Where have we lost our sense of wonder? If, as Margaret Wolfe Hungerford is credited with saying, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” why have we – why have I – been willing to accept our culture’s definitions of beauty? I really do want to know who decided that manicured lawns were more desirable than flower-strewn meadows.

As I was finishing up this column, I heard the revving of the lawnmower engine, and I now know that my plea to save the innocent violets fell on deaf ears. I just hope they grow again in time for Madelyn’s next visit. If you happen to see the two of us on our front lawn, you’re welcome to come and sit a spell, take your shoes off, and join us as we count the delicate purple petals, wiggle our bare feet in the grass, and blow the dandelion snow into the sky.

Teased

As a result of a childhood scarred by sibling rivalry, I do not like to be tickled, and I do not like to be teased. Don’t call me by my middle name in a sing-song voice, don’t threaten to bury my favorite doll in the sandbox, don’t call me Olive Oyl, don’t hold me down and tickle me. I don’t like it – and by the way, Dr. Seuss, I don’t like green eggs and ham either.

We’re familiar with the scenario – we have our personalized details, but the plot is the same.  And, much like bullying, the more the victim whines, cries or complains to mom, the more the teaser teases.  Not the happiest of childhood memories for any of us, I’m sure. (Note to self: don’t be too quick to forget the role of the bossy older sister in the rivalry). P.S. we get along fine today.

The mental health worker in me realizes that tickling and teasing can be actions a person in power foists on someone with less power. It may start out with good-hearted intentions, but all too often teasing ends up being a kid brother to bullying. I was curious to see what the experts had to say about this, so I did some research on the subject, and I discovered Dr. Dacher Keltner, who has developed a definition of teasing: “an intentional provocation accompanied by playful off-record markers that together comment on something relevant to the target.”

OK. Putting it into everyday language, teasing is either words or actions designed to provoke another person, and what separates it from bullying is the marker – the smile, the laugh, the irony, the sing-song voice, the exaggeration. Peter Gray, another expert on the subject, suggests that teasing has valuable purposes - it can express acceptance, promote humility, and can be used as a means of correction and social control or a test of social relationship. I don’t know, Dr. Gray – I not sure my brother’s teasing expressed acceptance or promoted humility in me –I thought it expressed an “I don’t like you” attitude and promoted humiliation in me.

I’m feeling somewhat teased these days, not by my brother anymore, but by the promise of spring. Yes, I know we’re a few days short of the official first day of spring, but it definitely tickled us with its warm fingertips as we basked in a 70 degree day this past Sunday – It was so warm the temperature broke a record – I read about it on the front page of the T-G so it must be so.

Ah, spring, you are such a tease. You tempt us with the pale blue crocus arising in the midst of the winter-ravaged yards. You whisper your promise in the fragile paperwhites that cluster near the fence. Bathing suits on the racks at Wal-Mart, a cardinal in our maple tree, and lots of traffic at the A&W – surely the days of winter are numbered. Now would someone please inform the snow-maker that it’s time to pack it in for the season?

The promise of spring makes me wonder if the lovely Madelyn Simone is old enough yet to read bits and pieces of Burnett’s “The Secret Garden.”  Do you remember the line when Colin asks Mary, “Is the spring coming?’ and she replies, “It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine, and things pushing up and working under the earth?” What a perfect description.

Yes, springtime, you’re provoking me, but unlike the teasing of my brother so many years ago, I can accept your taunting, because I know that by March 20, the Vernal Equinox, Old Man Winter will be officially banished from these parts as you send him on his way. I’m so ready. I’m ready to pack away the boots and parkas. I’m ready to fly a kite. I’m ready for March Madness to start, cheering on our Buckeyes and Lady Eagles. And I’m more than ready to proclaim, as Rainer Maria Rilke did so many years ago, “It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.” Ready or not, spring is on its way!