I started this beautiful morning of Spring Break reading from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings in preparation for our seminar next Tuesday. Reading about the Ent's assault on Isengard, Treebeard's description of their flooding of the place caught my attention.
"Water may come through--and it will be foul water for a while, until all the filth of Saruman is washed away."
Perhaps it was this account of the cleansing of Isengard that got me thinking of the importance of springtime renewal. Or perhaps it was the male cardinals calling and chasing after the females through the bare branches of my back yard trees that got me thinking about the wonderful changes that come with spring. Whatever it was, I soon moved myself off the deck and to the yard to do my part in the renewal process of the world.
First I burned the ornamental grasses, the old stalks of last year making room for the new sprouts of April; their ashes nourishing the roots. Then I moved to my blackberries. It is important to cull the canes that produced last year, in case they are diseased or have parasites and so that the younger canes can have room to thrive and bare summer fruit of their own. The work is not hard, but the burning is HOT and requires diligence so that the cleansing fire does not consume the life around it. The thorns are sharp in the brambles and drew their servant's blood.
As I cut and pulled the old canes, the process of spring renewal set hold in my mind and I began to marvel at how essential the process is for each one of us, too. Putting theology aside, and we could be a long disquisition on that here, don't we each need to do spring cleaning? Don't we each have old habits, values, mistakes that we allow to be carried around with us long after they bore fruit, if they ever did at all? Do we have bad influences that have stuck around too long? Bent understandings that need to be straightened?
But I also did more than cut away the dead and diseased. I also took the tips of some of the blackberry brambles, bent them to the ground, and covered them with earth. The stalks that once groaned toward the sun now bend to the darkness of the wet and warming spring ground. Before long they will take root and bring forth new canes that will bare fruit in the years ahead and I will release them with a snip to wave free in the wind once more.
My challenge is for each of us to consider our lives and characters in this time of nature's renewal and commit to washing away, burning away, or cutting away all those elements of yesterday that are inhibiting the growth of your wonderful fruits of summer. And, while we are at it, let us strengthen and grow those aspects of our lives that will bring forth future fruit in ourselves and those we encounter.
