March is the time for climbing out of winter. After snow, ice, freezing rain, and endless clouds, a sunny day at fifty degrees feels positively balmy. The forsythia is blooming. The daffodils have “curtsied up and down.”[1] It has been a long walk through the wilderness, and Easter is on the horizon.
In the best years, the inner self begins to bloom again as well. Modern psychological man assumes he merely projects his own hopefulness into the objectively neutral mass of blooming atoms around him; but Malcom Guite is friendly towards this “‘pathetic fallacy’, the habit whereby we project our inner feelings, our distinctively human ‘pathos’, onto the surrounding environment, so that the outward becomes expressive of the inward.” He explains:
I don’t think this is quite as fallacious as some people assume. The very fact that we find a constant and seemingly natural correspondence between the outer and inner may itself be a clue to the nature of the universe and our role in it. It may not be simply that we project, but that we, ourselves a part of nature, are finely attuned to and can give a conscious ‘inward’ expression to its outer meanings. Indeed, Coleridge went so far as to suggest that we are able to read the ‘eternal language’ which is already patterned into the appearances of nature.[2]
Perhaps some cases of Seasonal Affective Disorder should be re-diagnosed as “Nature Fluency.”
At times, however, the inner life continues on dormant even as spring bursts other bonds all around. It is easy to chide oneself: learning should be easier, growth should be faster, the pieces should fall into place, the fruit should be ripe! But, “For everything there is a season,” and “He has made everything beautiful in its time” (Eccl. 3:1, 11, ESV). For the little that may be perceived on the surface, precious work is being done in the soul’s winter.
Asleep, Not Dead
Around November I was reminded in an online social group devoted to the care and keeping of houseplants about proper care measures for plants in dormancy. Do not fertilize or overwater. Plants need less food during this time. Do not repot. Do not despair. “She is not dead, but sleeping” (Luke 8:52). (Except some of my plants are definitely dead.)
In a technological age we tend to think of ourselves like computers. We need time to “process.” We have got “too many tabs open.” We need a “reboot.” Joy Clarkson muses about the metaphors the Bible uses for us humans and our spiritual life—the topic of her new book[3]—in this podcast with Sally Clarkson. What if we adopted a more biblical metaphor for our lives? What if we saw ourselves as trees instead of machines? When a computer is not working, it is broken; when a tree is not growing, budding, or fruiting, it may be dead; or it may be asleep.
During the winter, a deciduous tree certainly appears not to have much going on. You can come back to it week after week and not see anything different, unless it has lost a limb or two in a winter storm. But during all that interminably boring time the tree’s energy is on reserve deep down underground, roots like blind moles digging around imperceptibly. It all has a purpose; the cerise buds on my backyard maple are the first faint hint of the spring explosion to come, when all will be made new.
Like that maple, there are seasons of the soul—sometimes long ones—where growth in understanding, wisdom, holiness, and virtue seems to be completely stalled out. What was a sprint becomes a plod or a stand-still. Rather than sending word that all is lost, we can wait patiently for the Lord’s arrival, delayed though He may be by His mercy to another bleeding woman (Luke 8:43–48). These times of waiting can send us back into our roots—the Root—conserving energy, deepening softly, readying for the burst of a spiritual spring that certainly awaits, just like the physical spring rolling across the countryside this month.
Consider the trees. God has baked the resurrection pattern into the cake. Death today does not mean death tomorrow. It can mean rebirth if Christ’s touch and “Talitha cumi” comes upon the soul. In the meantime, though we have been reborn, and the work has been finished, we find ourselves in a sort of Holy Saturday moment—our redemption is secured, but we await with anticipation escaping the grave forever. This longing is true of our whole pilgrimage and feels especially true during times when our inner life seems to stagnate. What do we do with a Holy Saturday season that seems to drag on?
God Rested
It can be tempting to climb out of the stillness of the Saturday tomb too soon. When you look up and find your branches bare, you might run to the attic for last year’s bulbs and lights and throw on the tinsel in a frenzy. Resist! Channel your energy to the roots. Stay off social media and email and away from books that know the answers to all the problems. Like a rescuing keg, they may bring warmth to the extremities, but at the cost of precious blood leaving the core. Better to “enter life maimed” by the knowledge of your spiritual shortcomings than to conjure up the false sensation of intellectual, emotional, and even spiritual busyness that comes from these distracting pursuits (Mark 9:43).
Instead, put away all outward vestiges of productivity and sink down deeper into the disciplines. Satisfy your hunger with the meat of the Word; slate your thirst by drinking at the river of quiet prayer; take shelter in the building of His body of believers, Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone. These are the deep waters that build strong roots; if fruit is what we are after, a strong and extensive root system will be of the utmost interest.
Additionally, if we are nursing a period of spiritual dormancy, we must be sure to eschew the paradoxical values of our cultural moment that seeks to worship at the altars of consumerism and productivity simultaneously. In place of consuming or producing, believers must adopt a practice of receiving with thanksgiving. We ward off consumerism by the mild asceticism that comes with hibernation—reading, hearing, and speaking only what is essential. We fight the temptation of productivity by remembering that God rested on the Sabbath. We can rest on the Holy Saturday “sabbath” before the true resurrection Sabbath by receiving His work on our behalf. When a harvest of righteousness seems a long way off in our own lives, we can receive with gratitude the perfect righteousness of Christ and rest as He did in His finished work.
A Budding Branch
All in a moment you may find your soul’s spring coming in like a lion. Seemingly from nowhere there is new fervor in prayer, tender fellowship with believers, the Scriptures sweet as honey. All the books everywhere, like birds in spring, are speaking to each other. It cannot be accounted for simply by a mood or a temperament—there is real growth in understanding, patience, joy, wisdom. All at once something is illuminated: you understand and see more than you did and wondered how you missed it all that long, weary winter.
And though spring does not come from nowhere, you can hardly say it comes from somewhere either. “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). By some mystery the nourishment you took in and stored up has burst into leaf—transformed and transposed.
Can we really be surprised? “The saying is trustworthy . . . If we have died with him, we will also live with him” (2 Tim. 2:11). The Root of Jesse is in bloom forever, and in His wisdom it has pleased Him to sprout this budding branch as well. In this miniature prelude of our soul’s resurrection, we may turn our receptivity and thanksgiving inside out, touching others with the blessing of God’s own fruit yielded in season, taking, eating, and sharing from the Tree of Life.
As spring rounds the corner, may the promise of resurrection sustain you for many a long winter to come; may you be blessed with the hope of a spring of the soul; and even more, enlivened with the promise of our Sabbath rest just ahead. “For behold, the winter is past . . . the time of singing has come” (Song of Sol. 2:11–12).
[1] A. A. Milne, “Daffodowndilly,” When We Were Very Young (New York: Dutton Children’s Books, 1924), 30.
[2] Malcome Guite, The Word in the Wilderness: A Poem a Day for Lent and Easter (London: Canterbury, 2014) 45.
[3] You Are a Tree: And Other Metaphors to Nourish Life, Thought, and Prayer, by Joy Marie Clarkson.
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