The Crocuses

The crocuses are lying just below the snow this time of year. I know that. They are not visible but they are there from my planting them some 15 years ago. It’s normal for me to think of them during early January when my exposed skin bears the brunt of the wind that pushes the temperatures downward. I gaze into the barren field across the road, searching the stripped branches for signs of this year’s buds that will obey their creator and open when they are called. We have just entered into the season after Epiphany, yet I seem to be yearning for Easter. Am I impatient? Bored? Confused? Apparently there is some disconnect between my senses and my soul. Or perhaps I am just present in a place I may not have been before.
There are many Januarys tucked into my life. Most of them have been forgotten in a mundane silence of cold or the blur of a holiday hangover. One is particularly well deserving of my life’s landmark in time from the freshness and excitement of a new found love, my wife. Although it is a characteristically mundane new year in appearance, my world seems unsettled. I can tell you that my intentions of being present to the purpose of Advent were honorable, even with the death of my beloved Dad in the midst of it. Death is as obvious as birth at this time of year. We die to our old selves to be born again in Christ. Advent is a time of exploring and waiting. Christmas is a time of celebrating. Epiphany is a time of discovery and turning the corner to a new world of life and thought. Living and thinking anew are not compatible with most secular mind sets. We are told it is not acceptable to keep your decorations up into the next year. Christmas began (for some) after Halloween, while a vast number started the celebration while engaged in the activities of Thanksgiving Day. While I have no objection to preparing for holidays in advance, my personal preference is to remain active during the entirety of this holy season. So when my friends comment on my continued and seemingly excessive salutations for a Merry Christmas past New Year’s day, I am not puzzled by their curiosity.
As much as I’d like to commend myself for previous years where I thought a corner had been turned in my journey, there was merely a hint of change – barely a glimmer of hope. While honoring myself with pats on the back, there was a retreat of sorts back to a secular world where I found comfort in being with the norm. Today I am uncomfortable. And we are well past Christmas. We are just past Epiphany. I begin to contemplate the words of T. S. Elliot in his poem “The Journey of the Magi”:
“…But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their Gods. I should be glad of another death.”
Yes, it has been told time and again from those whose formation makes a turn to another reality where the world seems to be looked at through different lenses. Once we become the Magi, where we make the discovery that there is a different world when discovering Christ, when our attention is not ruled by a date on the calendar dictating when and what hangs on our door, decorates our walls, or lights up our lawns, that is where we meet Christ in the world. I do not know if my present situation is because of an uneasiness with the world as I refrain from being drawn back to my old dispensation. It could just as well be a continued process of grief. Or a head cold. Only time will tell. Meanwhile, I do know that the crocuses are lying just below the snow this time of year.