In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war and the pussy willows purr by river’s edge and all of earth murmurs and stirs, in the spring, it died and I threw it out the back door. Just threw it in the back flowerbed. That back bed off the stone stoop, where the dog lies on hot summer days in earthy cool, where I let children plant random seeds of whatever strikes their fancy and, there, far from the front door’s more arranged color profusions, all grows entangled.
It seemed a good resting ground for a dead plant.
“This past spring you did it?”
“Not this past spring. The spring before. It was just one of those grocery store specials and after it wilted brown, I stuck it out there.”
“Well, did it ever bloom during a summer – this one, or the last?”
“No, never.” I’m certain. I’d watched and waited.
Horticulturist friend shrugs her bewilderment, shakes her head.
I too can’t help but laugh, tell the impossible story over again. “Last November, when everything else was dead out there, it sprouted up and put out blossoms, but never actually bloomed.” I remember how I just thought it confused, that it’d figure these seasons out in another season, adjust accordingly. “But this year, come November, it fully unfurled. Five radiant trumpets.”
She laughs too, the craziness of it.
I touch their iced petals.
I tell my mother about it.
“Some things have a timing all of their own, don’t they?”
Yes, true, that too. Timing, unexpected, surprising. His.
But there’s more. It’s the stark meeting of the two that draws me back to the back bed. I come several times a day. I tell everyone who comes to the front door to come see what’s at the back door. The juxtaposition of it startles.
Snow, pristine and icy, clumps close. Petals, slender incandescence, proclaim. Come mid-November, Easter heralds the coming of Advent, the coming. I can’t quite get over it.
But the wonder is no wonder, really. Isn’t it His ordinary way? The dead of winter, and the manure stench of manger, cradle the hope of God in the Flesh. The flaming sunrise of Resurrection Sunday burns with the heat of his life-blood drained out.
Joy lies in the pain. Pain seeps into the joy.
In this terminal world, joy and pain live face-to-face, always; struggling companions.
We birth and we laugh, we fall and we run, we marry and we quarrel, we embrace and we cry, we dance and we mourn, we remember and we die. As much as we dig fingernails in and cling to happy life seasons, strive for a life only of summer joy, doesn’t snow always come? Our summer bliss always brushes with winter chill; such is a fallen world. Frost deadens. Bitter cold creeps. But maybe there is no clear delineation of seasons, but rather they mingle, entangle; a howling blast in June, a balmy day in February.
Jesus endured the Cross for the Joy set before Him. Pain births joy. Joy knows pain. Each is known only because they know the other.
They come together, this endless struggle of the cosmos.
But one day, like in Narnia, the snow will melt for the last time, and summer joy will reign eternal. Until that day, Jesus-hope always breaks into our winter bleak.
I touch the stamen’s anther gold again.
Pollen dusts my fingertips. Snowflakes fall.
In the fall, at the time when all dies in a fallen world and icy white smothers in thick cold, all the earth stirs to sing joy to the world, because of Jesus who bore all our pain.
Lilies bloom in winter.
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Lord God, I accept both from Your hand, pain and joy, accepting that in this world, they come together. Someday it will be only, always, joy — You whisper Your certain triumph with Jesus, and daily mercies, and Advent and Your comforting presence. And lilies blooming in winter.
You will have pain but your pain will turn to joy. (Jn 16:20)
Photo: lilies and snow in our back bed
