Look at the Crocus!

My field education supervisor in seminary was a priest named Brad Rundlett. A man of deeper and more genuine faith I have never met. The swirl of seminary and systematics chipped away at the restful faith I’d always had. Into that worry and that loss, Brad taught me that faith could be something else, something more, something deeper. Brad taught me that faith is sometimes a bucket full of clear water on a hot day and other times, faith is trusting that the bucket will be full again one day.

Brad’s life had not been easy, filled with loss and tears. But he was also sly and mischievous. Deeply present and entirely hilarious. We laughed and we cried and we rolled our eyes at the sometime mundanities of parish life, of our own lives. It wasn’t all easy. It wasn’t all terrible. God was poking around somewhere in all of it. It was real life.

On a difficult Sunday, when his oldest was deployed to Iraq and some church member had been unkind, we drove to lunch on a cold March day, the year’s last snowstorm melting to reveal some green. Suddenly Brad slammed on the brakes and pointed to a yard across the way, “LOOK AT THE CROCUS!” And sure enough, in a sunny spot where the snow had melted, poking purple and white and flashing orange, those little bulbs were there to remind us that the winter comes, but it also goes. It wasn’t all easy. It wasn’t all terrible. God was there. It was real life.

I went to Walmart last fall and they had crocus bulbs. I cried when I took them home, thinking about Brad and all he has meant to me. For some reason I didn’t have time to plant them that weekend, and they sat on the counter of my tool room, shuffled from this side to that when I grabbed the saw or the blower, or when I put away my Christmas gifts. Sometime after the first of the year, those little bulbs started to sprout, there in the dark, in the warmth, in the plastic wrapper. I didn’t forget them; I just didn’t have time (I didn’t make time).

In desperation, I finally put them in the ground. And I hoped.

I checked on them for weeks, and then I saw a bulb – chewed and dead – the victim of a squirrel and his late winter appetite. The weeds were sprouting, the hostas were putting out their tight swirl of green ahead of their shady summer life, but nothing from the crocus.

And then one day - LOOK AT THE CROCUS! A lone purple flower. I pushed away the leaves that had blown into their bed and I saw shoot after shoot. It wasn’t all 36 that I stuck in the ground. Maybe it will be half that number, but some are alive, in spite of my inattention.

It’s not all easy. It’s not all terrible. God is here. It is real life.

It’s often easy to spot the dogwoods, all white and pink, and the redbuds popping out. Sometimes we can see Easter at 40 m.p.h. driving home from work. But I want to challenge you to pump the brakes, to get closer to the dirt and the mess of it all and to find Easter there too.

Look at the crocus. It’s not all easy. It’s not all terrible. God is here. It is real life.