The Resilience of Spring: Inspiration and Call to Action

"Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise."   --Maya Angelou, 1978 

In this part of the world it is almost, ALMOST full on spring. But…it is not quite yet.

I write this piece in the third full week of April, an often stubborn time in Creation when the iron grip of winter seems to refuse to let go and the promise of summer seems to still be far off. That’s what it’s like here in central Minnesota at this time of year. Each spring I return to this special place on God’s green earth, a Benedictine University that sits in the middle of the prairies and the farmer’s fields with a chill cold that still doesn’t know it is time to leave.

Yet, today, right here, we are so, so, so close now.  We can make it to spring. I know it!

The tips of the trees sport tiny green buds where just days before these were bare and brown.  The loons cry out from the lake as if to say, “Come on spring! It’s time!”  The sun stays up later and later and the angle of the light is higher and sharper. The pungent aroma of manure wafts up from the fields where in just weeks sprouts of alfalfa and sunflowers and corn will appear. Outdoor tables appear at restaurants. Baseball is in full swing and it’s time to listen to the Twins game on radio WCCO.

There is a resilience to nature in the spring, a dependable power to turn and turn and turn and be renewed and changed and then to showcase brand new life. To remind us that one day the snow does melt and the frost does recede and all life itself somehow is miraculously reborn.

And the earth rises. We rise.

This is the quality of resilience our world needs right now. Our nation. And yes, we who are living through this winter of our discontent. A chilly time of wars and more wars. Of a belligerent and bully leader who spout threats against any and all who dare to challenge his imperious and increasingly unhinged “leadership.” Each day’s headlines bring forth more turmoil and tumult and chaos, the suffering of the innocent, the cruel treatment of the weak and the wandering by the powerful. It can feel as if the bad guys are winning and by a lot and yet….

Resilience calls out to us. Can you hear it?

Resilience yells from the treetops: “Hang in there and hang on through!” Holy resilience asks us to be channels for God’s goodness and God’s grace and God’s peace and God’s mercy, which will and must finally break into the world.

Resilience is ready to show up, and spring is ready to reappear and so we too must be resilient if swords are to be smashed into plowshares. Resilient…if warmongers are to be silenced. If the corrupt are to be called out and shamed. If folks of faith who act with cruelty and then hide their actions beneath the fig leaf of “religion” are to be exposed.  

Resilience challenges us to have the faith and courage to confront, to resist, and in the words of Saint Paul, to stand up for and defend, “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable.”

My God, do we need spring! Does our world need spring! And yes, friends, it is coming. May we believe in this hope. Work for this hope. Trust in this hope. 

And may God help us all to be resilient.

(The views expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect the views of the people and church I serve nor the United Church of Christ.)

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

 

        

 

 

To the Stars Above or the Mud Below: What Will It Be America?

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, …it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” --Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, 1859

I could not help but feel whip sawed at the contrasts in Wednesday’s (April 1^st) news cycle.  In the early evening we saw Artemis II successfully liftoff, as it began its weeklong mission to transport four astronauts to the moon and back. This is American’s first manned visit to our close celestial neighbor since December 19^th, 1972. That day Apollo 17 lifted off from the lunar surface, with mission commander Eugene Cernan offering as departing words, “God willing, we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind."

Looks like we just might accomplish that hope and prayer: return to the moon but maybe even more important, in the process remind ourselves as a nation we are still capable of achieving big things, if we work constructively and all together.  We can still trust in science as a dependable measure of life. We can remind the world that America once was, and might be again, a nation that acts with competence and integrity, and can be depended upon to help lead the world.

Or I suppose that instead we could just devote our national resources to war and conquest and violence. The Presidential budget request for the Department of Defense is $1.5 trillion, a record. Whoopee. We could threaten anyone on earth who gets in our way, even nations who were once our faithful and true allies. We could put the power to make war in the hands of someone who never served in the military, who mocked decorated Senator and Navy Pilot John McCain for getting shot down and held as a POW during the Vietnam War.

That’s the basic “mindset” expressed by our “Commander in Chief” on the very same day as Artemis II’s launch, just a few hours later in a speech. He bragged that, when it comes to our current war with Iran, “We are going to bring them back to the stone ages where they belong…”

I suppose that’s just what we should expect from a cave man.

What a stark and sobering contrast and contradiction about just whom the United States of America is in 2026.

We can shoot for the stars, or we can wallow in the mud.

We can work together with our longtime neighbors like Canada in trust and faithfulness and invite a Canadian, Jeremy Hansen, to be a part of the Artemis’ crew.  Or we can tell our one time friends around the globe that its every man for themselves. When it comes to oil and the Strait of Hormuz, well, good luck with that. Don’t expect us to help.

In my religious tradition Holy Week is always about getting to a place of light and hope after moving through days of darkness and despair.  From Good Friday to Easter Sunday.  From stormy shadows at night to bright skies in the morning. From the cross to the empty tomb.

Really, that’s what so many humans, I’d say most humans, strive for every day. To be hopeful and then to live so as to give others hope too. Hope for a better world and for better lives. Hope for more love and less hate. More peace and less war. Most religions seek this hope as well: the greatest good for the greatest number of people across Creation.

But to get such a place of hope is to be and to do that which is essentially good and decent and kind and visionary and loving and peaceful. To achieve hope is to believe we can do better. We will do better. Like sending a rocket to the moon and giving hope to millions. 

And the way to lose hope is to use violence and threats against anyone who doesn’t agree with our bellicose, chaotic leader, he who likes nothing better than to make war, abroad and at home.  

Me? I’ll take the stars and I’ll take hope and I’ll take peace every single day. I hope you will too.

(The views expressed in this essay do not necessarily reflect the views of the people and church I serve nor the United Church of Christ.)

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.