of growing older is the appreciation of spring. Winter, the plaything of a child, seems to grow longer with the years, colder, and harder on the soul. When the snow begins to melt, not the false melt of late January but the melting days of March when the sun and time guarantee the results, there is a sense of relief that grows over the years. The earth warms, and the human soul with it. The days are longer and life itself seems to extend, shaking off the gray and white and putting on green and all the colors of the sun.

As a child I noticed very little of all of this. I was glad to get out and play, of course, but the larger significance passed me by.  Spring is resurrection, the putting off the cold, the dying, the worn out, the tired, and its replacement with tender shoots of life. Within in it is a taste of the deepest human longings and the destiny we wish we hadn’t abandoned in Eden. It seems so much more apparent now. Perhaps its because as you get older the idea of seeds lying in the ground, abiding alone, awaiting the warmth of the world to bring them back to life seems so much more relevant.