The Crocuses near the parking lot door of the Church have already come and gone. And now, there are six Daffodils in full bloom on the sunny side of the Rectory. I love these Daffodils, but they have the antagonizing effect of making my longing for Spring intensify. I enjoy a certain anticipation for all of the seasons, but Spring is the only one for which I become impatient. Now that the snow is gone (and we can never be certain that there will be no further snow in this “cruelest month,” as per T.S. Eliot) I want to get out in the yard and get going, though the yard is a little bigger than I can handle. We hire the Spring cleanup done by professionals who make it look easy and go quickly in their youth.
Thirty years ago I had the opportunity to visit Holland in the Spring. I happened to be there on the Queen’s Birthday, so there were crowds everywhere. Staying in Haarlem, outside Amsterdam, I got up quite early one morning in order to make my way to the famous Keukenhof Gardens the minute they opened, in order to avoid the crowds. I arrived nearly an hour early, expecting to wait in my car, but the ticket seller took pity on me and let me in before anyone else had arrived. So there I was in a garden of eight million Tulips in bloom along with fields filled with Rhododendrons and Azaleas.
I was transfixed by the beauty of it. Everywhere I turned the scene was more beautiful than the previous. Flowers were all tidily arranged in undulating, curving beds between lagoons and manicured lawns. I took 300 photographs and wondered why everyone on the globe hasn’t been to this bit of Eden.
Man was created for Paradise. The original Eden was the location that God intended for us in to live in union with Him, though separate from the Heavenly Paradise. Banished by the sin of Adam, Paradise has been restored by the Sacrifice of the New Adam: Our Lord Jesus Christ… also in a garden: Gethsemane, where Our Lord prayed. “Not my will, but Thine be done.” Sharing in His Resurrection as we especially consider in this Eastertide, the Lord raises us to the New Eden. No garden of earthly delights, this is the Paradise hoped for and longed for since the day of the Fall of Man.
At Easter we create a Resurrection Garden, as it were, inside the Church. My hope is that, while enjoying the beauty of the decorations, your desire for Paradise will deepen, and the small moments of joy we experience now and in the Spring to come will be for us a foreshadowing of the beauty of Heaven above. I close with that brief, beloved poem of Dorothy Gurney:
The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth;
One is nearer God’s heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.