A hundred years ago, T.S .Eliot wrote, “April is the cruelest month,” When I woke up mid-April to snow on the ground, I thought T.S. had gotten it exactly right. It seems fitting to mention this is also National Poetry Month.
But did you know that April is also the National Month of Hope?
Neither did I.
April in New England is supposed to be squarely in the season we call spring, but too often surprises us with one more winter storm. I should know it’s coming, but every year it feels like the cruelest trick. This time it feels like the cruelest trick in the cruelest year. To wake every day to witness many of the principles and values we love being degraded; so many of the people we love being otherized. We may feel untethered, our emotional responses to daily indignities bouncing us between anger, determination, fear, resilience, despair, and yes, even hope.
Meanwhile, the natural world obeys its own calendar. Peepers begin to sing their marshy peeps - April snow or no. Goldfinches are growing and showing their yellow plumage. Crocuses have pushed their heads above the mud in spite of overnight frosts. Hope in every color, shape, and sound emerges. There are spiritual lessons for us in every peep and each unfurling bud.
As people of faith, we are called to respond to cruelty with hope. Our flaming chalice is an enduring symbol of our shared commitment to keep the flame of hope alive. Forged in the fires of World War II, the artist Hans Deutsch centered sacrifice and love in his design. (And if you don’t know about New England’s own Martha and Rev Waitstill Sharp’s story in those days, please read about them here!)
As people of faith who draw inspiration from many sources of wisdom across continents and through the ages, we believe in the Hope that spring promises. There is a reason that it is in springtime that Demeter waits to welcome Persephone back home. There is a reason that our Christian forebears anticipated and celebrated the Resurrection in spring. Here in New England, where there are now more hours of sunlight in every day, hope feels a wee bit easier to find.
The spiritual challenge for us this now is not only to tend this hope, but also to take joy when and where we can. Joy is a necessary corrollary to Hope. Sometimes it comes easy; sometimes, we fight for it. In these times, I look to scholars of Black Joy, like Brandy Factory, who writes, “Black Joy affirms that…I am an agent of change. It rejects the idea that violence,... injustice, discrimination, prejudice, and dominance over others are normal and acceptable actions.”
Beloveds! Hades will always be readying his chariot to reclaim Persephone. So while she is here with us, let us feast. Let us sing.
Empire will always seek to snuff out Hope’s light. While it abides, let us adorn ourselves with violet crocuses, make headbands of forsythia to prepare the way for May’s Flower Moon. Let us dance.
It may feel somehow wrong to insist on Joy when so much is breaking and broken. It is an act of faith, to insist on Joy, and always entails some level of risk.
Just as the crocus pushing through mud risks an April snowfall, we are also part of the nature of things that rise up from the muck over and over again; season after season, singing as joyfully and full-throatedly as an ocean of peepers, as a sky-full of Canadian geese joyfully reclaiming their summer homes.
Tend to Hope, beloved, and take heart. Take joy, wherever and whenever you can, together. As the poet Mary Oliver of blessed memory has written, “If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it…..Joy is not made to be a crumb.”
