Musings on Formation III.

As a lifelong Californian, the changing of the seasons remains to me a mystical and beautiful phenomenon. So, this February, when I awoke to the presence of morning snow, I layered on several coats, pulled a beanie over my head, tucked my hands in pockets and scurried out of the house for a walk. The world had yet to awake, and the crunch of my footsteps felt as intrusive as a cough during mass. Everything seemed suspended in a holy silence, a divine stillness. 

 Against the stark blankness of snow, my eyes were drawn to a vibrant pop of color just beneath my feet: it was a violet tulip bud, buried beneath an inch of clear ice, almost as if it had been encased in rosin — the petals paused in a moment of transition, frozen amidst their unfurling. As I leaned down to look at it closer, I could imagine the sun rising, melting the ice so water trickled down into the soil below, and that the thawed snow would, eventually, aid the growth of the flower it had earlier held captive.

Formation is cyclical. In Walden, Henry David Thoreau describes humans as “a mass of thawing clay.” The inherent imagery is not new. Often on a Sunday, I have heard a preacher dully remind congregants that from dust we came and from dust we shall return. Usually this metaphor is accompanied with a tone of resignation: we are, unfortunately, mortal, and there is nothing we can do about our looming death. But embedded within Thoreau’s description is an implicit sense of movement — we are dust turned clay by the droplets of water released by our own thawing. It is our own disintegration which makes us malleable to change and primes us for growth.

This season feels stagnant. Without plans, gatherings, or events, there seems to be no tomorrow, only an eternal today. But life remains. Spring meets us halfway. Perhaps it is already here — already within us.

Perhaps we need only let the force of dawn split us open. 

Marlee Baker, Prose Editor.