Spring Forward - Time for Snowdrops

I started my day drinking strong coffee while watching ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ with my four-year old daughter, a soft rain falling outside melting the snow and ice of winter.

Snowdrop blossoms have made their way back, rising once again through the dead leaves of last autumn.

Tonight, imagining that we actually have reign over time, we will set our clocks ahead one hour to welcome the longer days of spring and summer to come.

The season of newness, that time when death morphs back into life.

I later picked a volume of Thomas Merton’s journal writing and read the following:

“This was the day of the year when spring became truly credible. Freezing night but cold, bright morning and a brave, bright shining of the sun that is new and an awakening in all the land, as if the earth were aware of its capacities.”

And it hit me – this is the heart and soul of the Barack Obama presidential campaign. This is what is different about him. Obama makes us aware of our capacities and possibilities. He does battle with the American idolatry of ‘I’ and calls us to become a ‘we’ and to join him on a remarkable journey of cooperation, hard work, and belief. His faith is that we can make a difference, here in America, and then around the world. Obama’s pledge is the promise of spring.

Of course, there are other voices in this campaign - voices that appeal to ancient distrust and suspicion. Voices stirring the waters of racism, ethnic identity, and fear mongering, Voices of ‘I’ that make empty promises none of us really believe.

Voices that bring to mind a poignant quote from Gandhi:

"There are tyrants and for awhile they can seem invincible,
But in the end they always fall.
Think of it...always."

I don’t know about you, but I am clinging to the possibility side of life, and if that makes me some sort of celestial lunatic, so be it.

Bring on those choirs that have the power to bring snowdrops back in the spring.

zjm