Like spring, love is stronger than death

VITA Sackville West knew a thing or two about the turning seasons of the year, if only through the intimacy that came from nurturing and tending the magical gardens she created at Sissinghurst in Kent.

The internet will tell you that the best time to visit is in June, when all the roses, and the famous White Garden, look their most stunning.

I was somewhat surprised, then, to come across this quote from Sackville West: “April (is) the angel of the months, the young love of the year.”

As quotes about this month go, I’m more familiar with the more prosaic: “April showers bring May flowers.” It’s a thing I say to myself by way of encouragement every time I am drenched in a downpour, midway through a dog walk on an otherwise sunny day.

But perhaps Sackville West and Robert Browning, with his wistful “Oh, to be in England now that April’s there”, have a point.

While spring officially starts in March, with the equinox and clocks going forward, April is when we really know that spring is happening and we see and feel the full power of the unstoppable energy at the heart of creation.

We are so lucky in England to have the gentle progress of snowdrops to daffodils pushing through the ground at the start of the year, but there’s nothing like the stirring of the trees: the lime green of the new leaves bursting into life in April.

In a matter of weeks their stark, skeletal outlines of winter are transformed into a vibrant canopy, filled with birdsong. And in our part of the world, we have the extra beauty of carpets of bluebells laid beneath.

April reminds us that nature is part of a beautiful, ever-renewing cycle of life.

Sadly, human ears do not always seem to hear the signal that the rest of nature understands.

The relentless news of wars, of leaders who seem determined to reduce neighbouring countries to rubble, silencing birdsong and silencing life along the way, mirrors cold-hearted winter more than spring.

It’s easy to be fearful that disregard for the hard-won moderation of international law could mean events escalate beyond control, drawing more of us into a conflict we do not seek.

How good that in worrying times like these, we can hold fast to the Easter message of new life, to a love and a light that no amount of darkness in the world can extinguish.

The Easter weekend started in the darkness of Good Friday, when cruelty and injustice seemed to win the day and a man of healing and peace, whose message was love, was put to death. All hope seemed lost.

But the force behind nature’s beautiful, ever-renewing cycle of life, the God of love and creation, did not leave things there, he raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead.

And because of that, nothing in this world — not evil, not cruelty, no amount of destruction — can ever have the last word for us, for winters come to an end and love is stronger than death.

Rev Romey Poston
the Langtree Team