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SUMMER
1999George Crispin
Woodbury MMAcross the horizontal line framed by the kitchen window there appear little yellow daubs amid the trees. It is spring.
About twenty years ago the daffodils were given to me by Ethel Haines, and I planted them in the woods in back of my house. Ethel’s home was a haven of hospitality for many a weary wayfarer. Committee meetings were held there, along with assorted sewing circles for women of the community. During the Friends Village Fair to raise money for the Friends School, Ethel’s home was a beehive of activity for craftmaking. Many a happy hour I spent there over tea and talking. Now every spring of the year her daffodils push through the earth, a reminder that the time of gardening, and afternoon showers, and warm balmy breezes is upon us, and I think of Ethel, resurrected in my mind, and her soft voice and generous mein that registered genuine caring.
Many of the people and places are like that; they resurrect at various times in our lives. How many times have I not thought of Dan Test. He was headmaster of Westtown School, kind, sharing, compassionate, yet ramrod straight in knowing his own mind, especially when it came to a moral issue. In these times when our society seems to be terribly confused about right and wrong, and when I need reassurance myself that there are absolutes which our opinions cannot change, I think of Dan Test and take couarge. He becomes resurrected, his power reaches me yet, and his influence lives on.
There are places in our memories where we go when times are unpleasant or just to change our environment. In the midst of a freezing ice storm in winter we go to a smooth lake on a summer day where the sun bathes us in warmth. Perhaps it is a lake from our childhood where we went fishing and caught nothing, but had the pleasurable company of a friend. Now, on this cold winter day, when travel is not advisable, our memory is resurrected and we are warmed.
Or perhaps it is a book, like an old friend whose familiar words inspire us out of long association, authenticated by life’s experiences, and when life gets rocky it takes us to a placid shore. Its power is resurrected. Or perhaps it is a place from out childhood, whose resurrected memory revitalizes us from the well spring of youth.
Once when I was a child of perhaps eleven, I walked passed the house of a old women I barely knew, and found her sitting on her f ront porch. Her moans conveyed her pain, and I found upon inquiry that she had scalded her hand over a saucepan and did not know to whom to turn for help. For the next hour or two I sat with her, bathing the red, blistered hand in ice water and her spirit in the balm of compassion.
There was nothing especially good about me as a boy. I got into the usual mischief. But, like most people, there were moments when I could rise to heights that would suggest a higher self, and this was one such occasion. It has been, over the years, that memories of times like this, when resurrected, reaffirm that in us all there is “that of God,” our higher self.
Springtime is the time of resurrection. The buds, buried beneath the frost, are resurrected, bursting through the earth and into the sunshine. Conversations over the backyard fence, driven inside by the winter cold, are resurrected, and talk begins again of babies born in the neighborhood and garden plans. It is also the time of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, crucified by the Romans, borne to his grave by a remnant of followers who returned to find an empty tomb in the morning.
Perhaps there is more than one meaning to this event that occurred 2,000 years ago. Perhaps it is that we are crucified by the storms and blasts of life, the tragedies and disappointments that we experience. But the awareness of other resurrections, like those of an inspiring friend, of a tranquil place, of a moral stand, of an act of kindness, of the replenishing of the earth, and of Christ’s rising from the tomb, are all reminders that there is within us the power to rise again in the face of dissolution and despair, to bring forth the goodness that lies with in, that higher self, a resurrection.
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Wednesday, February 18, 2004 at 08:19 AM
