Welcome Back Spring. Finally Here! God Knows We Missed You!

"Blossom by blossom the spring begins."       --Algernon Charles Swinburne

It has to come. It must come. It will come. It has come. Finally.

Spring. At least for me. How about for you?

Yes, I know that technically, meteorologically, spring began in these parts March 1^st; or if you really want to split hares (!) spring began March 19^th, more than a month ago when the earth’s equator aligned with the sun.  

Others marked spring’s initiation on April 9^th, the day of the Red Sox home opener, played in the friendly confines of Fenway Park. Bright blue skies and sixty degrees. It was a mixed day, with excitement at a brand-new year but sadness too. For Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield, the team’s longtime knuckleballer, as good a soul and teammate as you’d ever meet, he was remembered. You see he died much too young at 57 of cancer last October. Tears were shed by fans and teammates. 

And then it was an underwhelming effort by the men in red and white. Baltimore Orioles 7, the Sox 1.

Maybe the onset of spring for you is about enjoying foods that come back after chilling out for winter. Ice cream cones. Anything grilled. On a seaside boulevard south of Boston, not far from my childhood home, is a venerated restaurant called the Clam Box. For 55 years folks have stood in line there in flip flops and dripping bathing suits awaiting the deep-fried delicacy of fresh clams, or fish and chips right out of the fryer, or a juicy cheeseburger, or in my case, onion rings. The Clam Box on Wollaston Beach makes the best rings in all of western civilization. Light and flaky, just a bit sweet, crunchy batter all brown and golden, salt sparkling on the rings’ surface.  Many springs my mom and I have ventured forth on the first warm spring Sunday, walked down to the beach and returned to the Clam Box. YUM!

How about the Boston Marathon? That’s a good signal for spring, the streets of MetroWest and Boston teeming with thousands of runners and cheering throngs.  Or taking the lawn furniture out of the basement and setting it up in the backyard. Putting up storms windows and pulling down the screens. Carrying heavy sweaters and flannel shirts back to the cedar closet, for winter hibernation and then pulling out short sleeve shirts and docksider boat shoes and maybe even a baseball glove and ball too.   

This year my spring opening came late, in part because it has felt so Seattle-esque around here, all rainy and chilly and gray. But yesterday I returned home from a weekend away to an explosion of colors that mother nature offered up, seemingly overnight. One day all is cold mud and blustery winds and cold temperatures and then one morning, spring just explodes!  

Announces itself with gaudy and gorgeous colors. Yellow daffodils dance forth. Red tulips twist and tango in the breeze. Green buds emerge on the end of tree branches, their tendrils stretching up towards heaven.  The purple azaleas in my front yard are blooming forth in all their violet vivaciousness, almost spilling over into the driveway.  The bright yellow forsythias that border the neighbor’s yard look like an explosion of sunshine, one huge bush spilling out onto the lawn in a symphony of golden hues.

WOW!  Weren’t those bushes bare, barely a day or so ago?

Welcome back spring! And yes, however we humans choose to meet it, to mark it, to revel in it, to calendar it, to just say hello to this new season.  God knows we need spring. I know I absolutely do, every year. Maybe this year even more with so much ugly, messy stuff going on in our country and world. Spring never gets old or boring. Never fails to amaze with its resurrection power, its invitation to start all over again, to begin anew, to believe in renewal, both natural and spiritual.  

In April and May God wakes us and the earth up from slumber and lethargy, shakes our shoulders and dares us to revel in the warmth again. To be witness to these months when the earth embodies hope as it awakens too. Nothing can hold back spring. It has been with us forever in a way and it is stronger and more faithful and dependable than any human power. Thank you, God, for spring.  May we enjoy it and invite it back into our hearts and homes.

Me? I’m ready for my very first order of onion rings. It is finally time for spring!

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.