Spring and winter

Last week when I got home from Johannesburg I got home to the early days of winter. I had left five days before in late summer, and now I had missed the two days of autumn to find myself in winter. Winter as in the tropics ... colder, dry. No snow. Winter endured for a few months in houses and clothing designed for the hot weather ......

And suddenly the odd dislocation I feel at Easter makes sense. Much of the imagery, much of the symbolism that I read and is part of the liturgy is geared to new life, to spring. Spring that is happening to the north of me, where Life burgeons anew after the layering stillness of snow and cold and long, cold winters. A physical affirmation of the Resurrection. Yet my physical world is drifting down to dormancy, leaves yellow and fall, grasses brown and die, days shorten and the light itself changes. The world around me dies ...... withdraws, bides it's time until the coming of the rains. In the deserts to the south and west of us seeds fall to lie dormant in the sand not for a season but for many seasons. Until the rain, that comes once in ten years, falls. And then in days plants spring up and flower and are fruitful ....

Here and to me just now, the Cross, Good Friday makes sense, but not always the Resurrection.