Spring Has Sprung

Dan’l and Lina and I finished reading Slaughterhouse Five a couple weeks ago, and I’ve been thinking a lot about one specific aspect of the book, which is that it consistently juxtaposes the ordinary and the absurd and the horrific, sometimes all within the same character on the same day. Aliens, and a bird tweeting, and bombs dropping. The firebombing of Dresden.

Against that backdrop, I was downstairs playing Hollow Knight, maybe that’s the aliens in my story, when Lina came down and got us all to come outside.

At first I thought there was something wrong, but about halfway up the stairs I started to hear the cacophony of frog-song from outside. I think she opened the front door just as I was coming up into the kitchen, and wow, just wow, wow, wow. It’s really funny to me how suddenly it seems to happen every spring. Just one evening the sun sets, and it’s crazy loud, and there are a hundred frogs in our little pond. Some combination of temperature and time of year and we still haven’t done anything to interrupt their annual cycle.

Back before we had dug the frog pond, I’m sure you all remember this, but just indulge me telling the story again, back then we had a pretty substantial mud puddle on that side of the driveway, and one season a frog or maybe it was a toad, but your mama figured out that somebody had laid eggs in it, and she pulled a hose across the driveway and kept that mud puddle filled with water for the six weeks or so it took those tadpoles to find their way out of the mud puddle.

Being the very romantic partner that I am, I special-ordered a copy of The Book of Frogs by Tim Halliday. The cover calls it “The life-size guide to six hundred species from around the world.” I haven’t compared a picture of our spring peepers to the Pseudacris crucifer picture in the book, but from the description this is unmistakably our species:

“The Spring Peeper provides one of the first sounds of spring, the male’s distinctive ‘peep’ being heard by day and night as long as the temperature is above freezing.”

And

“Within a chorus, adjacent males often form duets and trios, alternating their calls with one another. If a rival mail gets too close, they switch to an aggressive call, which is a stuttering trill.”

They’re on page 318 if anyone wants to read more about them. I know that Meeting is supposed to be mostly about the Bible, but I this is arguable the Bible of Frogs. One of the cool things in the book is actual size photos of all the frogs, and page 318 also includes a drawing of one puffing up its neck pouch for a peep.

There are a thousand other little signs of spring and of normalcy. Katie took a picture of the crocuses peeking up yesterday. Crocuses? Croci? Crocuses sounds right to me. Lina noticed snowdrops blooming in front of the porch where I hadn’t exactly planted them but also hadn’t exactly not-planted them. I made a snowdrop Kokedama two seasons ago, but it didn’t work very well, so I just abandoned it by the front porch. Lo, and behold, they took root and are now blooming where they were not-quite-planted.

One of my favorite signs of spring, besides the peepers, is how the buds of the trees just swell up until they look like they’re about to burst, which I suppose they are. All of those sycamore trees we planted last season look like they made it through the winter. I saw swelling buds on all five of them yesterday.

Part of the reason I always talk about what’s happening right now when we have Meeting is that I think it’s an important practice, to notice the world around us. The seasons moving, the frogs coming back, the buds swelling and bursting into flower. not just what we saw on the news. That too, but not only that. Noticing the turning of the seasons is my act of rebellion.

Before the peepers came back, which seems like it’s obviously the most important story for Lent, I was all set to talk about Elijah.

I’ve been reading about him a lot this spring. Part of the reason is this wild story in the New Testament that we call The Transfiguration, where Elijah and Moses appear and Jesus becomes radiant with them. I sort of imagine his face glowing like Moses’s did when he brought the tablets down off the mountain, but because of that story I’ve been sort of thinking about Jesus and Elijah and Moses, and this story about Elijah stuck in my head.

Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, while he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, Lord,” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.” Then he lay down under the bush and fell asleep.

All at once an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again.

The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God. There he went into a cave and spent the night.

I’m especially drawn to what the angel tells Elijah there, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.”

The backstory of Elijah is a little bit horrific. He’s learned that Ahab and Jezebel have killed a bunch of prophets and they want to kill him, and now he’s suicidal, so he lays down under a bush.

To quote Kurt Vonnegut, “So it goes.”

Then, someone wakes him up and feeds him, and he’s okay to keep going a little while longer, well, quite a bit longer. And in the next part of the story, Elijah stands in the doorway of his cave and hears the voice of God. He’s sad and tired and depressed about the state of the world. He stops and listens, and he can hear the voice of God.

A still, small voice, we learn.

I don’t want to package anything up too neatly hear, but I do want to say, listen to the peepers tonight. Let their voices fill you up, and let everything else that’s happening to you and that’s happening in the world, let it still be there, too. Hold them all at once, but don’t let go of the still, small voice or voices that you can still hear.

I love you all so very much, you fill me with such a feeling. I hope everyone’s Lent is going okay, and that you’re remembering it starts new every day, but especially today. Let’s light our candles and think about Elijah and about peepers.

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