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Elsewhere in the world, in friendlier southern climes, gardeners are deadheading daffodils, harvesting their first direct-sewn lettuce, and watching the songbirds sport and preen among trees spangled with nests. Elsewhere in the world, but not here.
After a gentle burst of warm weather at the beginning of March, weeks of identically cold and dismal weather have set in, paralyzing southern New England with pre-regency Narnian levels of seasonal depression. Always winter but never Christmas? Try always March but never April. The White Witch was defeated—twice—but her sister, the Brown Witch, now rules uncontested over Massachusetts. She’s not interested in murdering Aslan. She has no such grand plans. She simply wants to make everyone vaguely unhappy, and she’s doing a great job.
There are a thousand things on our to-do lists here at Classical Roots, but virtually all of them have had to be put on hold. Snow peas and mustard greens have been planted, along with radishes in ambitious numbers, but the soil simply isn’t warm enough to accept much else, and we have no greenhouse. We have repaired fences, raked dirt, divided chives—that blessed first herb of spring—and reorganized the Potting Shed several times over. Our potted spring displays, though still green, are in a state of growth paralysis which, unfortunately, puts them in great danger of disease. There’s nothing we can do about any of this but wait.
The kinder, brighter corners of the world of social media are full of idealizations and encouragements these days. Don’t let yourself despair, the advice goes. Instead, seek authenticity. Go out and plant something. Stay in and make something. Discover classical music. Have a candlelight dinner with friends. Get into tabletop role-playing games. Learn, God help you, to make cheese.
None of these are bad pieces of advice. All of them call us toward a world where a desire for power and control is surrendered to the humbling vicissitudes of external reality, where we are not God. But not many of these articles talk about the necessary drudgeries of such a word. The bright lights of constant, instantly accessible entertainment are so tempting not just because they promise an endorphin high, but also because they offer a way out of the gray depression of a world that isn’t always beautiful and that certainly isn’t going according to plan. But whether we are cheesemaking or gardening, the days will inevitably serve us healthy and unwanted portions of hurry-up-and-wait. There isn’t always anything to do. And not all silences feel profound. Some of them feel dehumanizing and awful, the emotional equivalent of being a young salad leaf that is slowly devoured by slugs.
These moments are probably the most important ones. But we can only recognize their importance in retrospect. They remind me of the creation story in Tolkien’s Silmarillion, where the great god Iluvatar summons all great angels to sing creation into existence. The rebel angel, Morgoth, begins to introduce dissonant music into the song, but Iluvatar weaves the dark strains back into the harmony. Once it is over, Morgoth is cast out, and the other angels are shown a great mystery: their song is the world, and the dissonant melodies, though terrible to hear, would eventually only serve to reinforce the unity of creation. The story is not an analog for dualism: Morgoth’s melodies are evil. But evil cannot create, and can only have the power it is given, and can only grasp at the illusion of victory. In the end, there is only one real power in heaven or on earth: the power of being.
We cannot give in to the lie of futility. For the properly ordered mind, futility does not exist, only waiting. But we have to practice that mindset, that spiritual orientation. This is the purpose of Lent and, apparently, of April is Massachusetts. I don’t have to like it, but to avoid it is to live the lie. And lies do not become us.
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This is a favorite and I am feeling it. Can't even go look at my gardens. They lie dormant still. Last paragraph is great. And are you making cheese?
I needed this today. Tis a brown world and I am cranky.