Spring: Rising from the Ashes

As I walked through the yard, clearing debris from a harsh storm that snapped branches off trees, I came across the first clear sign of spring:  daffodils poking shoots in the midst of the otherwise dead lawn.  The sun has warmed the earth and new growth appears.  The cycle of rebirth is begun.  After weeks of ice and temperatures well below freezing, I’ve been anxiously awaiting the rebirth of spring.  While some days have been warm, some nights have been cold, yes, cold enough for me to wake once again to frost and ice in the morning.  Yet, I am confident:  as the days grow noticeably longer, spring will soon be here.

Spring:  its German root is lenz and in Dutch it is lente.  It is from these Germanic words for “spring” that the 40 day period before Easter known as “lent” derives its name.  Perhaps members of Eastern Christian Churches recognize the association because the focus of the “Great Lent,” as it is most often called in the East is also known as the Lenten Spring.

Just as the mythical stories of a mystic bird rising to life from ashes found in the ancient cultures of China, Persia, Egypt, and Greece convey a beautiful metaphor for life coming out of death, so the Christian Lenten Spring draws us to consider that the beginnings of new life are found in the ashes of the broken parts of life that make up our past.  This symbol of ashes marks the beginning of Lent in Western Christianity as palm branches from the previous Holy Week are burned to make ashes rubbed on the foreheads of the observant faithful.

I grew up in Western Pennsylvania, in the heart of coal country.  In my childhood, I remember riding the bus to school early in the morning and seeing coal miners returning home from their overnight shift with faces and clothes blackened with coal dust.  Our home was heated by a coal-fired furnace.  After the coal burned, ashes were shoveled out of the furnace each day.  My father saved the ashes in barrels.  In spring, the ashes were tilled into the soil thick with clay.  My family’s backyard garden grew out of those ashes. The ashes helped to break down the hardness of the clay while also providing nutrients to the vegetables that would grow in our summer garden.  Yes, the grimy dirt that marred the faces (and lungs) of the miners, that also warmed our home during the long winter, was essential to make a garden of bountiful produce.

Ashes.  They are dirty, messy, and smelly.  They are the remains of something lost to the consuming heat of flame.  They are the remnant of something that was once beautiful, as in the case of palm branches, or that provided warmth for a family, as in the old furnace.  Ashes.  They are the remains of what has gone before, of things once prized and valued.

The struggles of our lives often result in ashes.  Devastating life events seem to bring ruin and pain.  The symbol of ashes to start the Lenten Spring causes us to consider how even when we are most broken, when our lives seem burned to the ground, there is the possibility of something new.  Yes, the phoenix rises from the ashes.

The allegories of the cycles of life, a death and rebirth, are essential stories in many cultures.  They represent our deepest hopes for life in the midst of tragedy.  Over the weeks of the Lenten Spring, emergings will reflect on ways that people find life’s circumstances to have the potential to scorch them, leaving nothing but ashes.  The struggles we experience in recovery from devastating life events, in bereavement following the loss of loved ones, or when overcome by financial crises often seem to be more than we can handle.  Yet, the Lenten Spring offers hope: that out of the ashes, new life is born again.

Yes, spring is near.  In the middle of the dead growth of my yard, I saw the first sign:  the daffodils have begun to grow.  New life is coming.  There is reason for hope even when I’m clearing the yard of debris after a storm.