The Redemptive Power of Spring

As I write this, slabs of ice - some the size of ping pong tables - are cruising by very fast on the inrushing tide. Some sport lazy gulls hitching a ride upstream. There are snowy patches on the ground in spite of our on-going thaw, and the entire marsh is wearing its winter brown and tan.

Today's Photos by Jan

Right on cue, I'm having my first major spring pangs. I remember starting the hunt for spring even when we lived in mild Northern California - at this time of year the wild mustard would turn fields brilliant flickering yellow. Around here the signs are different. Near the door of the hardware store, the maple sugaring supplies are helpfully set out in cartons with the tops cut off. In the little inlet in front of my house, drakes and ducks are doing - well, let's call it the mallard cha-cha. Nonstop. Even without the spring time change, the sky is light now by the time Maine Public Radio switches from the pompous thunderings of the BBC to friendly local weather and news at 6 AM. The marsh bird population is changing - new visitors are stopping by.

Many of us think if we talk  about warm weather now we'll invite punishment, and indeed around here snow in early April isn't that uncommon. I love the quiet precision of our black and white Maine winter, but that doesn't create an aversion to spring. The coming smell of wet earth, the sound of rioting birds on the marsh and the astonishing palette of greens along the river are intoxicating.

The chaotic explosion of new life in spring feels like a redemption from winter. Redemption can mean a recovery or reclaiming, and also an absolution or forgiveness. Most religious and spiritual traditions celebrate some form of redemption. I remember sitting on the grass on a spring day many years ago with a Navajo friend who told me, "Your job as a person is remembrance and recovery." Incarnation in the Hinduism and Buddhism, and important features in most other religions incorporate the hope of forgiveness and second chance. The possibility of change is never forsaken, even in the harshest puritan-tainted forms of Christianity - a religion that raises redemption to a central tenet.

Redemption is tied to the act of forgiveness, a putting aside of blame and hate. I make elaborate mental pictures of the men in shirts and ties or wearing lab coats, who carefully planned the dispersal of chemicals that killed my wife, maimed me, and forever traumatized my children. I think about a man closing the lid on a bomb that will go on a bus and blast children into pain and death. I think about lovers in the glare of a late night kitchen argument, drowning in a torrent of irretrievable wounding words.

Terrible acts are hard to forgive. The most difficult are our own. I lie awake thinking of harsh words spoken years ago to one of my kids, or the face of a person I fired. Most of all, I picture the last years of my wife's life - what could I have done to better ease her suffering, was there something I never found in all those years of frantic googling that might have saved her? On dark winter days I might be more inclined to forgive Shell Oil than myself.

Spring is the season of redemption. If we open our eyes, we see that a second chance is inexorable. The explosion of buds and birds happens around us no matter what we do - or what we have done. Enough of the ducklings will survive the foxes to populate the marsh, and enough of them will die to feed the fox kits playing on the grass by the bridge.

Spring doesn't reward virtue. All life is renewed. No one judges the willow buds or the eagles or for that matter, the dreadful horseflies who find me so delicious. Unstoppable spring spreads forgiveness and second chances everywhere. Immersing ourselves in the restarting of life all around us, we can remember, and we can recover. We can forgive.