The Wonder Report: April 4, 2025

Time's Inevitability

Apr 04, 2025

Happy Friday!

We are in the fullness of spring now, both its verdancy and its violence. The trees are heavy with blossoms now, even as thunderstorms and tornados ripped through our area earlier in the week. (Thankfully we only suffered minor damage to our roof, though we are praying for others who endured much worse.)

There’s much about spring that straddles the contradictions of life, the hope and dread that both propels us and holds us back. It’s into that contradiction that I am writing today, even as I flit about the edges of our ongoing conversation about time.

Let’s dive in!

The Green Days of Spring

In my work as a children’s librarian, I am preparing for a spring storytime next week, a tea party of sorts, with tiny cupcakes, real China teacups, and a harpist to strum beauty over us all. There will be bubbles and lollipops for the children to take home, and a craft project to color and glue, and of course, lots of books about spring (because what kind of librarian would I be without books?).

In anticipation of the event, I have read dozens of spring-themed picture books. Most of them begin with snow and darkness and end with daffodils, flowering trees, and dappled light. Some feature the activity of animals that seems to increase with the lengthening and warming of the days. Others highlight children, weary of the cold, drab days, who look for the signs that spring is coming. Most of them seem to circle in one way or another around the theme of “will spring ever actually get here?” I’ve asked that exact same question myself, especially now that we’re a few weeks past the spring equinox and I’ve still got the space heater running.

Thankfully, though, we’re finally in the green days of spring, when green rises over the earth like rays of sun. Green shards poke up from the ground. Green foam shrouds the trees and bushes. Green haze reflects in the swollen ponds. Green comes this time of year, and we cannot – wouldn’t even want to – stop it. Green comes, which means spring comes. And boy, have we been waiting for spring.

Interestingly, the green wave always comes as the days of Lent seem to stretch on and on. Despite Ash Wednesday’s message of memento mori (“remember you must die”), I find that the early days of Lent carry with them the pastel hint of spring coming, the hope that all will, indeed, be well. I always have the grandest intentions for Lent, penitential intentions in which my sins are confessed and repented and ultimately left behind, forgotten. But Lent is nothing if not a season to remind us how very present sin still is in the world and in our lives, a reminder of its own of how very much the coming Passion and Resurrection of Jesus is our only hope for this life and the next.

So it seems, that just about the time we are coming to terms, again, with the fact that this will not be the Lent when we finally put away sin for good, the mighty green wave comes, reaching into every thicket and knoll, every patch of grass and even the tiniest trees. We know there will still be the occasional dips below freezing, the nip of buds which may have sprung too early, the white frosts covering the bright green growth of the grass. We know spring will be over as quickly as it comes, haunted as we are, by the reality of the shadow of death we know is never far behind. But for a green, green moment, when spring does come, we feel its deep, deep relief.

If children’s picture books capture the impatience of a spring that seems to come much too slowly, the realities of middle age remind me of an inevitability about the seasons that’s deep and reassuring, especially when so much else in our world feels unexpected and unprecedented. A thousand times a day things don’t go as they should: The car won’t start. A child wakes up sick. The basement is flooded. The dog gets loose. The price of eggs goes up … again. A spouse walks out. The diagnosis is bad. Yet without fail, sometime in March the daffodils will bloom and the daylight hours will grow longer and the birds will start flitting about in pair. And we remember, again, that spring is not the only inevitability we can trust in.

“The earthly powers of kings and cities is dwarfed by the might of nature and even more feeble when compared to the power of Christ and wyrd,” writes Eleanor Parker in Winters of the World: A Journey Through the Anglo-Saxon Year*. Sometimes rendered as “fate,” this Old English word, wyrd, often has a more quotidian connotation, which Parker describes as “the inevitable forward movement of time.” In a culture that values youthfulness and living in the moment, there’s a certain harshness to wyrd, a stark reality that we’re not as much in control as we’d like. It stokes the nihilism of “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” It feeds the platitude that nothing good lasts forever. Inevitability, as it turns out, can lead to impotence, hopelessness, and inaction.

Yet there’s something more to wyrd, something below the surface that reminds us that this inevitability runs by design, it cycles on mercies that are new each morning, and it’s ordered by Love. Like the rising of the sun, the rotation of the earth, and the persistent seasons of the year, which we can’t control but “can observe them, describe them and come to understand the place they … occupy in the world,” writes Parker, so too, God’s invisible hand in the world and the light of his love operate in an inevitable and observable way. We can recognize their givenness. We can receive them gratefully. We can acknowledge them with the humility of our creatureliness. And even as we wrestle with time–try to squeeze it dry of every minute and fight against its incessant tyranny–we can find a much needed place of rest in this concept of wyrd. Its inevitability insinuates a predictability we long for. Its continuity points to an overseer we can trust. Even in its harshness we find an equity that seems lacking all around us.

The green days of spring remain in full force here in central Indiana, accompanied now by the blasts of white and pink, yellow and purple, that arise through the bursting of the bulbs buried deep in the soil and the birthing of blooms on trees that have sat in silent witness all winter.

But Easter is still two weeks away.

As I walked the stations of the cross again today (my Friday habit during Lent), I felt again the sadness of leaving Jesus still abandoned there on the cross in the 12th station. Sometimes it feels too heavy, this season of sitting with the harsh realities of the world and the deep suffering we all experience at one time or another. It just drags on, this season of looking honestly at ourselves, remembering why Jesus hung on a cross in the first place.

But whether we feel the itch of impatience or the dread of inevitability for what’s ahead, we can find a companion for these days whose name is Jesus. The creator of time–of sun and moon, seasons and days–subjected himself to the constraint of waiting and trembling. He humbled himself to the wyrd of a world he holds together by his very hands. If we feel an ache at leaving him there on the cross, how much more must he have felt the pain of his own abandonment. Yet he stayed there for us.

“Now that we know what we have—Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God—let’s not let it slip through our fingers. We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all—all but the sin. So let’s walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help” (Hebrews 4:14-16, The Message.)

I wonder … what is your typical posture about the future, impatience or inevitability? How does Jesus sit with you as you wait? In what ways are you currently anticipating Easter?

Lenten Companions

This year for Lent, I have reading a few books that have become helpful and inviting companions during this penitential season. I wanted to share a brief word about each in case you might find them helpful in this season.

Reclaiming Quiet: Cultivating a Life of Holy Attention* by Sarah Clarkson. This is the first book of Clarkson’s I’ve read, so I came to it expecting the wrong things. I had thought it would be a book about setting aside my smart phone. Instead, I found a thoughtful and beautiful reflection on why my soul tends toward distraction in the first place. Clarkson is a writer who is both accessible and elevated in her prose. She’s understandable, but I wanted to reread each sentence because it was just so exquisitely constructed. I actually took the time to journal through the discussion questions at the end of each chapter, and that practice added richly to the reading of this book.
Living the Christian Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God* by Bobby Gross. To be fair, this book has become my companion through all the seasons this year (did I mention this book last time?). But the themes Gross touches on for Lent—temptation, pride, prejudice, and possessions—have been especially helpful for self-reflection. I initially tried to read this book a chapter a week, since it’s organized by season and then week throughout the church year. However, each week’s reading includes deep and insightful reflections on five to six Bible passages, so now, I read one a day and spend time studying and reflecting in my journal.
The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything by James Martin. I have been reading this book for six years! No joke. But the chapters on The Simple Life and Surrendering to the Future, which I’ve read over the past few weeks, couldn’t have been more timely. If you’ve ever been curious about Ignatian Spirituality, and practices like discernment, examen, contemplation, and more, this book might be a worthwhile read for you.

I wonder … what books have you been reading lately? Do you choose books specifically for the seasons? Have you ever read so slowly that you spend years reading one book?

The Wonder Report: April 4, 2025

Time's Inevitability

The Green Days of Spring

Lenten Companions

Discussion about this post