How will spring feel five years from now?
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| Whirlpools in spring. Photo by kim giseok on Unsplash |
What better way to involve your children in the pageantry of Palm Sunday than with a picnic lunch in front of a National Cathedral livestream? That was our thinking, anyway, when we moved aside the coffee table, spread out an old red sheet (liturgical significance unintended), and sat with our plates of reheated leftovers to mark the start of this year's Christian Holy Week.
As a family forged in its early years during the COVID-19 pandemic, we aren't strangers to watching religious services online. This instance was elective; we felt it would be easier to maintain our kids' attention during the long service if they could move around, and we had greater latitude to explain the service without having to worry about distracting others in crowded pews.
In the midst of our picnic, a memory struck me of Palm Sunday five years ago, early in pandemic lockdown, when my older child, then 18 months old, closed out our at-home service viewing by waving his hands as if he were holding palms for the entirety of the closing hymn "The King of Glory." The sudden and vivid recall surprised me. My breath caught in my throat. Tears pricked my eyes. I watched my now-big kid reading aloud from a picture, asking questions about the service, explaining things to his younger sibling, and I wondered: Is this what a wrinkle in time feels like?
This spring, memories from that era of my life have assailed me at every turn. The silky, crepe paper Kanzan cherry blossoms bursting, as they did when I snapped pictures of them on my daily work-from-home constitutionals. The bright green of tree buds that stuck around longer than usual, a gift during a year when health concerns drove us out-of-doors. The shifting vernal landscape of my backyard as seen from my home office window, a view I was suddenly taking in every day. Similar, as well, the high level of aimlessness and distractability, the random urges to cry, the mental necessity of taking one day at a time—to look only at whatever is in my headlights.
Why are the memories more visceral and present this year? At first I thought it might be due to a potent combo of the Covid anniversary, personal deathiversaries (grandfather, grandmother, friend), and daily reminders of the passage of time as my kids outgrow clothes and master the monkey bars and explore our HVAC's inner workings. I am familiar with these registers of grief, and I recognize their echoes here. But the feeling that thrums beneath my springtime blues isn't fully grief, or isn't only grief, so I have continued to examine the emotion from all sides.
As I do so, more depth and definition emerges. The emotion coloring my spring is closer to despondence, and it's powered not by grief or sorrow, but more by the overwhelming comprehension that unprecedented times are in fact precedented, and the way they keep "surprising" us frustrates me to no end.
We have been here before, us humans. We are always here, in the thick of war and on the cusp of discovery, caught in entropy while poised for rebirth. I won't reduce it by saying "the more things change, the more they stay the same." Rather, I'm grappling with the quote (attributed to Mark Twain) that says, "History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes."
The more things change, the more they morph. Grow. Evolve. The Kanzan blossoms keep blooming but on longer branches. The federal government has similar leaders but a sharper agenda. My child dances to Palm Sunday music but this time explains to me what he's doing and why. And my emotions shift in response. I always cry (such is the life of an overemotional ninny), but the tears are rooted in greater shades of fury, compassion, awe, and a deepening sense that I am both inadequate and enough—that when I move forward with Love, in Love, I move beyond my own limits as well.
In five years, what will I think of this reflection? What will I write anew? Which part of the endless cycle will the world find itself in? Where will I be in the swirl? Where will God? And on that distant, immediate day, how will spring feel?
Prayer #409: Eddy
"The water that by some interruption in its course, runs contrary to the direction of the tide or current ..." (Admiral W.H. Smyth, The Sailor's Word-Book)
Out we swirl
from single source
spirals caught in whirls
that circulate and agitate
at times confusing our direction
but mostly reassuring us
to know that each rotation
casts us wider, wider
forcing our expansiveness
extending comprehension
we now recognize this place
this view
this turn
Amen.
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Looking to probe your own capacity for change? Check out the section titled "Growth: Why Is Change the Only Constant?" in my book, Amen? Questions for a God I Hope Exists, for prayerful and poetic inspiration.