Set Out, Pilgrim, Into the Freedom

“Set out, pilgrim. Set out into the freedom and the wandering. Find your people. God is much bigger, wilder, more generous, and more wonderful than you imagined.” – Sarah Bessey

Spring has arrived here in Southeastern Pennsylvania, the real spring, not the tentative, feeble spring of March, when crocuses may bloom one day and be covered by a blanket of snow the next.

Farmers have begun churning up the fields, birdsong announces the start of each day, and front yards are painted in the greens of grass coming back to life, the yellows of daffodils and forsythia, and the deep purple-blues of pansies and anemones.

Who invented the concept of spring cleaning? The last thing I want to do in the spring is to be inside, scrubbing down walls or dusting off bookshelves.

Every spring, I want to fling open the door, quit my house, and live an outside life once again.

I want to walk down the dirt road that winds through the wetlands at dusk and listen to the chorus of the frogs. The peeps of the spring peepers, the trills of the toads, the barks of the tree frogs, and the chirps of the green frogs combine to make a cacophony that fills the purple evening sky and makes my heart sing.

 

By Brian Gratwicke – Redspotted newt, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8422888

 

I want to search the ephemeral forest ponds for newts, to see them hanging motionlessly at the surface of the water with just the tip of their noses in the air, their specific gravity exactly equal to that of their watery environment.

 

By DickDaniels (http://carolinabirds.org/) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=22641153

 

I want to stalk the returning ovenbirds, to find the source of the call that fills the spring woods with “tea-cher, tea-cher, tea-cher, TEA-CHER,” and see the elusive oven-shaped nest made on the forest floor by each pair of birds.

Spring is a reminder of the generous and exuberant nature of our Creator, who haphazardly flings beauty far and wide. It lands in some of the most unlikely places; swamps, fetid pools, the dry litter of the forest floor, to decorate our world in amphibians and birds and other wonders.

The least I can do to show my gratitude for this abundance is to be there as a witness. To put myself in the path of all of this flung splendor and marvel, gaping and breathless, at the miracle and the mystery.

This, rather than housecleaning, is our duty in spring.

Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it. Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them; let all the trees of the forest sing for joy. Psalm 96: 11 – 12

*It is my plan to document the arrival of spring here in this corner of Southeastern Pennsylvania through the progression of blooming flowers. This is the seventh picture in the series. The flowers pictured above are Anemones (Anemone coronaria). I found these, as I have found many of the flowers I have featured, on a walk with my hubby and our dog Benji.

 

I am linking with Cee’s FOTD Challenge, Welcome Heart for Let’s Have Coffee, Soaring with Him for Recharge Wednesday, Debbie at Dare 2 Hear, Reflections From Me for A Blogging Good Time, Crystal Storms for Heart Encouragement, Rachel Marie Lee, Knit by God’s Hand for Thankful Thursdays, Jessica and Amy at Live Life Well, Raisie Bay for Word of the Week, Susan B Mead for Dancing With Jesus, Embracing the Unexpected for Grace and Truth, Counting My Blessings for Faith ‘n Friends, Lyli Dunbar for Faith on Fire, and Worth Beyond Rubies.

Please click on the following link to read more funny or inspirational one-liners. One-Liner Wednesday.