In my laundry room, in tiny pots fashioned into greenhouses by way of plastic wrap and a heat mat, the first spindly tendrils of tomato plants reach up from the soil. If I were to gently pull one from the soil, I’d find the start of whisper-thin roots.
Buds on the lilac bush in our back yard are fat and the grass grows greener every day. In the garden, green shoots of garlic reach up from the straw under which fall-planted cloves spent the winter. It is spring.
We attend the Easter church service at home for the second year in a row, and afterward drive up the hill to where worshipers gathered at sunrise to put flowers on a wooden cross. We stop, and I stand in the cold wind to capture a photo. If this doesn’t look like a beautiful combination of promise, hope, and love, I don’t know what does.
Now, we enter the season of Eastertide—50 days leading up to Pentecost—and I’m struck again at the wisdom of observing the liturgical calendar. In this we have opportunity both to go deep and to reach, like the tomato shoots on the washing machine in my laundry room. To linger. And ponder. To see things we might otherwise miss.
We continue to climb out of a long winter and shake off remnants that stubbornly cling. At least, that’s how it feels to me. Some days it feels like two steps forward and one back, but there’s progress nonetheless. Slow and steady wins the race, my mom used to say. She was right, of course.
So, we reach and root and, like Julian of Norwich, trust that all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.
Related posts:
