Thoughts for the Month

MARCH

It has been a strange winter – in our garden in November we had primroses out and in January, snowdrops, cyclamen, primroses, daffodils and hyacinths were blooming side by side and catkins were shaking their tails on Cornish hedgerows. Nature was thoroughly confused by the changes in climate.

Winter can be a dismal, depressing time, particularly when the weather is bad and you do not have a fire to gather round. We lost our open fire when we moved to a bungalow five years ago and I do miss it – the yellow and red flames flickering not only gave off heat but also a cheerfulness that central heating cannot replicate.

March – no, Winter is not over but Spring is in the air. The weather can still, and often does, give sharp nips of frost or sudden heavy downfalls of snow, but it also can give sudden balmy days and trees begin to show their buds of new leaves.

Whilst still being chilly, there is a real feeling of ‘hopefulness’ in the air and this brings cheer to so many people. If the garden is full of the dancing yellow heads of daffodils and forsythia adorns the walls or fences, this sunny aura has to lift the heart.

It is always a miracle to me that having seen the garden largely ‘laid to waste’ during the winter – bare earth, trees and shrubs devoid of green and just plain brown branches and twigs - suddenly little shoots start appearing and ‘green spikes’ appear all around the garden followed quickly by all sorts of colours. With colour comes cheer and hope.

March also brings Mothering Sunday – I’m sorry, ‘Mother’s Day’ just doesn’t sound right – and with it, the posies of flowers in church. Whilst the intention was and is to give a posy to your mother - with so many families now not only spread across countries but often across the world, and their being a greater number of less traditional families, it seems right to highlight the carers in families and so, in our church, we give a posy to every adult in church, so acknowledging that caring is not limited to just mothers but sisters, aunts, fathers, brothers and uncles too.

So, with March comes a feeling of Spring – the chill of Winter is gradually fading and with it a feeling of hopefulness to lift our spirits.

‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.’  (Mark Ch. 4 v 26)