Springtime

I’ve been meaning to post something since 28th February, when I drove to work in a hailstorm and the rain beat distractingly against the office window all morning. My lunchtime walk encountered three separate showers, but in between, the sunshine used the road as a mirror to dazzle everyone; and set up one of God’s wonderful rainbows, that signals the covenant of “No more destruction by flood”. Will he stick to this promise or get out of it because fewer and fewer people will take the Bible literally?

I was working on other mysteries as I walked. Why is the sky inside the rainbow always brighter than the sky outside? Clearly it is a property of light refracted from raindrops, but how can they lighten the sky? Or do they darken the outer sky? Why have I never seen or heard a discussion of this phenomenon, in exactly sixty-five years? Today is my birthday. I thank the Lord, in whom I believe for one purpose only, as a being to address my gratitude, for being alive, in good health, mental and physical, and for innumerable blessings. To be so blessed is a mystery, for most of my life has been struggle, confusion and failure; the blessings were there too but they felt harsh, as they were constantly trying to correct me.

I continued my walk and in the brief sunshine between showers I realised one joyful fact: Spring had arrived! It was in the blossom on a tree, perhaps cherry or another kind of prunus. Spring was in the brilliant coloration of lichen upon a kerbstone, deep yellow. It was in the feathery weeds growing at the grass’s edge. Suddenly I realised, after waiting months for this winter to end—a winter too mild to deserve its name—that it had ended. The birds were singing ecstatically. And the clouds: I cannot tell you how beautiful the clouds have been lately.

When I was stricken with the illness which for years prevented my walking, I’d sometimes lie on a rug in the back garden and gaze up at the sky. It was a tiny walled piece of land, on a slope landscaped into a couple of grassed terraces, each the size of a monk’s cell. I used to focus on a tiny wisp of cloud and using concentrated willpower, dissolve it into nothing. Try it yourself!

That little garden opened out to the whole world, for it welcomed visitors in the form of insects, small mammals, birds and seeds. Its low boundary walls, topped in places by honeysuckle and clematis woven on a trellis, kept out human and canine intruders; but were otherwise porous to the whole world. In the same way, I can protect myself whilst letting the world reach in and touch my soul.