The Madness of Spring

aka the Greening of the Woods

Beloved friends,

All of a sudden, I can’t see into the woods anymore. My eyes are fine, thank God, but the trees have changed. Ten days ago, they appeared an ordered cohort of sticks and trunks, patient and waiting. Clad in somber greys and browns they stood, soberly rooted and stable.

But now? A mad, swirling Dionysian mob rampages beyond my windows and walls. There is not a sober one among them. Spring has struck.

No matter how many times I have witnessed this transformation, still it catches me off guard — how such staid, stable forest people can be possessed with the madness of spring. In the wild, green dance, everything changes.

For the past six-plus months, since last year’s leaves fell in a final burst of colored glory, I have seen well into the woods. In the wintry months, the woods are wide open. Access of eye and body is easy. But the leaves, oh, how the leaves change it all. In a seeming instant, what was a wide open way becomes a wall of green massed against unwary intruders.

I wonder, what will the madness of spring bring to the madness of the world?

There are different forms of madness, aren’t there? The wild madness of greening anew. The raging madness of ripping apart. I wonder, how do they relate?

I am typing awkwardly these days. My left hand is recovering from a surgery that will, God and body willing, return me to a full two-handed capacity I have lacked for some years. This was a planned and carefully executed (if somewhat gruesome) slice into the living flesh. Sometimes we need to cut away, to prune, in order to grow again. Sometimes the cutting just destroys and kills.

Either way, though, greening happens. Though the way may appear to be blocked, life finds a path. You may put your trust in this. In these Easter days of spring, love’s madness rises again. Look for it!

Stephen