Welcome to Spring. Today, 21st March, is the first day of the 2010 awakening. After the self imposed sleep, "death", of nature over the recent past winter months we now start seeing the rebirth of all that was hibernating.
So what's so special about that? It happens all the time, annually, that we perhaps ignore it, indeed even taking it for granted. In a sense that is what happens to us too. In a mundane sense, we start shedding our heavy winter garb and enter into a more relaxing and lighter mode of dress and general approach to life. It is, in a way, our own personal awakening too.
This is interesting indeed because when we look closer into all this we see a lot of what happens has a spiritual level too and seems to follow this "life-death-life" pattern too. The "seed" is planted, it dies, germinates and comes alive again in new blooms. Man, from time immemorial, has recognised this awakening and identified in it a personal link. The Spring equinoxe was the time when ancient man could know when to plant his food and how long he would have to wait to fill his home again with its produce for ultimate survival, salvation.
They saw in it the occasional graciousness of their gods, who would look favourably or not on those who offered sacrifice to them, especially at harvest times when the best of the crop was offered to their divine protectors. As the monotheistic concept developed and became more entrenched in human spiritual minds, the Almighty Good whom the world's main religions revered - and still revere today - began to be seen as the "manipulator" of all that happens in life. Their concept of a God was that he lived somewhere up there in the clouds, looking down at us and seeing how we cope, or not, with life in general. But getting angry at us if we offended him by our actions.
Scripture has turned this concept on its head such that we all know that this Almightly Being actually takes a greater interest in our lives, individually and collectively, than we imagine. There is really a love affair going on that may sometimes be one sided....... He loves us and we don't really care (perhaps because we don't understand what is happening). The well known romantic song by John Paul Young says that "love is in the air, everywhere I look around, Love is in the air, Every sight and every sound. And I don't know if I'm being foolish, Don't know if I'm being wise but it's something that I must believe in...."
There is an interesting element in all this because the concept of the Spring awakening is easily seen here too. The Almighty Good is said to have sent his Son or Prophets to advise us to change our ways to please him more. In the Christian context the important part of all this is that his Son died to save us and was resurrected after three days. It is, in a way, the rebirth cycle again, but on a divine level. This is a key belief to Christian thinking and without it the whole thing would probably collapse. The Son died to save us but is now as alive as ever before. And with us for all time since He will not die again.
