Small yellow daffodils have emerged at the foot of our cross, the carpets of snowdrops are beginning to fade away, dead looking branches of a magnolia tree are suddenly and purposely sprouting little green buds. These are some of the Springtime blessings appearing in our grounds as we prepare for the Trellis Therapeutic Gardening Conference.
Spring is now very much in the air. Nature is bursting back to life, and as I wander in the Bield grounds, a sense of joy returns to my heart, a smile appears on my face as I feel the pleasure and hope of new life.
The liturgical season of Lent coincides with Spring, calling to mind new life and growth. Hope and change should characterise this time of conversion. For 40 days, we are invited to start afresh, just as nature renews itself every Spring. There is a sense that here at the Bield we are starting afresh for a new season of hospitality and ministry.
The word Lent is derived from an Anglo-Saxon word lengthen or lencten meaning “spring.” We are “to spring” into action, to prepare for the new growth and graces that overflow from Easter. Spring is an important season for a farmer, for it determines preparing the soil and planting seeds carefully, hoping that the seed buried deep in the soil will produce an abundant crop. The sunlight and the rain remind us that God renews earth
A Benedictine nun and Doctor of the Church, born nearly a thousand years ago in Germany, Hildegard of Bingen gave us the concept of viriditas, the greening power of all creation. The early threshold of Spring has always been a powerful metaphor for the new life, dormant, which has prepared itself under layers of dark and cold. “There is a power that has been since all eternity, and that force and potentiality is green!” wrote Hildegard. She reminds us of our deep connection with the life force which sustains the universe and every living being: “Viriditas is the natural driving force toward healing and wholeness, the vital power that sustains all life’s greenness.”
Hildegard reminds us of what can got lost in the midst of human concerns. Faced with a planet threatened by our own destructive consumerism we are realising that our very existence depends on a healthy and sustainable relationship with creation. We are made of the same elements, fire, earth, air and water, that make up the rest of the created whole.
This Lent, I invite you to go outside, spend some time in nature, and appreciate the wonders of Springtime and, as the poet William Wordsworth put it, to learn again to dance with the daffodils.
Liz
Daffodils by William Wordsworth
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills.
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the Milky Way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a boy:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance
The waves beside them danced, but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company;
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
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