Spring seems to have taken a long time in arriving this year, with spitting snow on the first full day of spring, and with Easter coming so early, it still looked pretty bleak outdoors on the Easter Day. Indeed, on Passion Sunday, we blessed our palms outside with some people standing in snow for the blessing!  Our front yard isn't a yard really, just a strip of grass and a line of perennials, and we have a northern exposure on that side.  In order to get rid of the huge pile of snow I resorted first to breaking up the snow and spreading it out, and then finally to shoveling it onto the driveway where it would finally melt on the pavement.

In the last few days, though, spring seems finally to be on the way.  The street sweepers are out in full force, and the smell of mulch is in the air.  On the weekends, people are out with their rakes, cleaning out the debris.  The grass is finally looking at least a wee bit green, and there are buds on the trees and even a few blossoms.  Best of all, the early bulbs are finally coming up; the walk at church is graced with tiny narcissus and crocus, and the tulips and hyacinths are on the way. 

My next door neighbor, Martha, loves to garden, and she's my kind of gardener.  She just plants things everywhere, putting in anything she likes, so that by late spring, her little yard is a jumble of color and texture.  My favorite is the patch of lupines in rich purples and delicate lavender that remind me of Maine.  She marks the places she's planted new bulbs with plastic cutlery so that she doesn't dig them up by mistake; before the shoots come up, the garden looks as if Martha is miraculously growing forks and spoons!

It occurs to me that it's no accident that almost from the beginning, Christians have tried to understand resurrection by thinking of the garden.  Jesus himself talked about resurrection as being like a seed that is planted that changes to a green shoot, without us being able to see quite how it is accomplished.  We give small plants to our children on Easter Sunday, and invite them to enjoy the plants now, and then to plant the bulbs outside so that next spring they'll be reminded of the Easter promise.  It seems so miraculous that those small bulbs, not very attractive in themselves, could be planted in autumn, survive the harsh winter, and then grow into beautiful flowers come springtime, but of course they do--and they keep doing it year after year.

Resurrection's like that.  I don't believe that Easter was a one-off, something that happened just once a long time ago.  Resurrection is a promise that we claim too.  We are invited into hope, into a love that conquers even death--and we are invited to new life and to joy.  Resurrection is something that we live into, a process of conversion that we engage in all our lives.  It seems to me just right that Jesus could be mistaken by Mary for the gardener.  He is a kind of amazing gardener if you think about it.  The risen Christ coaxes each of us into new growth, offers to help us clear out the debris that separates us from wholeness and health, invites us to weed out the things that are choking us off and blocking us from the sun--or the Son-and promises to feed us with real nourishment.  Easter is a reminder that every single day we are offered a do-over; we can begin again, try for a fresh start.  We can remember always that we are loved and named and claimed, and that even when it feels like winter, and it seems as if the darkness and cold will be endless, light and life and spring will find a way.

One of the great things about our church is that we honor as part of our communion of saints holy men and women whose lives are meant to inspire and to challenge us.  We do not require miracles from these people of God; it is their very human deeds that we honor.  Hudson Stuck and John Muir are two such men, who left our world a better place and whose examples can inspire us to better environmental stewardship.

John Muir was born in Scotland in 1838 and immigrated to the U.S. as a boy of 11.  He loved the natural world with what he called "wild enthusiasm," and that love of nature inspired him to study botany in college.  He spent a great deal of time hiking through the Sierras, cataloguing wildlife and plants, and developing theories on ecosystems.  Some years later, he took up the cause of preservation and co-founded the Sierra Club.  Muir believed that our natural parks are "places of rest, inspiration, and prayer," and opposed free exploitation of resources for commercial use.  This put him in opposition to some conservationists who saw the national forests primarily as sources of timber.  Muir influenced President Theodore Roosevelt to assert federal control over the national forests, and was instrumental in setting aside wilderness as national parks. 

Hudson Stuck was an Episcopal priest and an explorer.  He was born in England in 1863 and came to the U.S. to study at University of the South, from which he was graduated in 1892.  He first served as Dean of the Cathedral in Dallas, but then moved in 1905 to the Yukon in Alaska, where he spent the rest of his life, serving as Archdeacon of the Diocese of Alaska.  Stuck was among the first group of explorers to completely ascend Denali, or Mount McKinley.  He called that ascent a "privileged communion," and upon reaching the summit, Stuck led the climbers in prayer.

All children from grade four through high school are invited to attend our diocesan camp, The Barbara C. Harris Camp

Chuck and Ginny Barthel, Dorothy Brown, Christine Camper, George Chace, Betty Fraser, Gloria Graves, Bernice Herrick, Allan Johnson, Deborah Katt-Lloyd, Lisa Kimball, Robert Knoettner, Mary Anna Krause, Tony Lopes, Carole Lutton, Maureen Manzelli, Jim McCallum, Lynn McDonald, Rheta C. McKinley, Sara O'Brien, Rhonda O'Keefe, Eleanor Schott, Kevin Smith, Ralph Ventola, Stephen Wagner and Ashley Westerman.