April 24, 2008

• Little hills rejoice on every side

  In the old King James version, Psalm 65 is so lovely:
  "Thou
  makest the outgoings of the morning and evening to rejoice....and the
  little hills rejoice on every side. The pastures are clothed with
  flocks... they shout for joy, they also sing."
  

  
  

  Have you ever seen the sunset through the white lace of dogwood trees in full bloom?
  Last
  night I went out into the sun porch on the back of our house, plugged
  in my laptop, sat down on the couch to write, and looked up. This is
  what I could see framed by the old-fashioned three-over-one sash
  windows that line the west wall: dogwood branches at the peak of their
  April glory, looking almost like they were covered in snowy goose down
  — and behind them, the pink sunset burning itself out.
  Totally unexpected, a wash of beauty across the end of a long, busy day.
  A
  gift — and I almost missed it by choosing to sit inside at the dining
  room table to write instead of going out to the porch where it's so
  pleasant with the windows open to the evening air — even with the dryer
  humming at the other end of the room, and the Great Dane at my side
  barking periodically at the dogs he can hear yelping from the
  neighbors' backyard down the street.
  I'm glorying in this
  mountain springtime. All my life I've thought of fall as my favorite
  season, but I'm about to change my mind. Springtimes in Mississippi are
  pretty, azalea-decorated seasons,  but our Ozarks springtimes are
  something even lovelier. They're more tender somehow...not quite as
  showy, but sweeter.
  When we first moved here to the hills,
  I read a story about a good old north Arkansas farmer who died and went
  to Heaven. When St. Peter was welcoming him in, the old man said he was
  right happy to be in Heaven. "But I’m just tellin’ you now, I’ll have
  to leave for a while every year,” he told the heavenly gatekeeper.
  “I'll have to go home to the hills every April, because I just can't
  miss the springtime in the Ozarks."
  I can almost see how a person might have to leave even Heaven to come back home to the hills so as not to miss the springtime.
  The
  piercingly sweet joy of it lifts our spirits after the solemn grays of
  winter, even though the hills are still beautiful to me even in their
  starkness.
  First to appear in my world were the little
  crocuses, purple and yellow and white, springtime's vanguard. Then the
  daffodils laughed their way up all over town, and the purple hyacinths
  and paper-white narcissus, that smell like Heaven must.
  I've
  delighted in the Bradford pears, and the redbuds, which always make me
  think of needlepoint branches on a canvas, carefully stitched in purple
  thread. And now the fragrant lilacs are blooming in the dooryards, and
  the regal iris are flying their purple and yellow flags.
  But
  its the sweet bridal beauty of the dogwoods I’ve been waiting and
  longing and hoping for, especially after missing them last spring. I've
  watched the trees carefully over the last weeks, since the limbs were
  completely bare, noticing that the ends of the branches are always
  upturned toward the sun. First, the ends of the little twigs started to
  swell, and finally one day I saw tiny pale-green flowers opening. The
  miniature green flowers slowly transformed, and as each day went by,
  the blossoms grew larger and whiter until they finally reached their
  joyful summit just in the last few days. Full and fluffy as wedding
  dresses, glowing white, reaching up toward the sun.
  

  
  

  Yes,
  there are problems, real, pressing, painful problems, all around us.
  Gas prices are pinching us more every day. All across our country,
  people are worrying and praying over the war, and gangs in schools, and
  people ruining their lives with drugs, and the falling dollar, and
  rising unemployment, and the economy and the presidential election. And
  folks around here have worried and argued and hurt each other's
  feelings over annexation and school millage increases and the alcohol
  sales issue and   the new Oxford House. Every morning when you turn on
  the news, or we open the Associated Press wire here in the office, we
  read about murders, or parents who hurt their kids, or children who
  want to blow up their schools and take their own lives.
  But
  let's never forget, friends — God's still in charge. This is still His
  world. And as we all learned as little children around our mothers’
  tables, God is great, and He is good. And He loves us.
  He reminds us every April when His dogwoods sing sweetly on the hillsides.

  

  
  By Celia DeWoody
  Copyright 2008 Harrison (Ark.) Daily Times
  April 23, 2008
  
  
  

  • 9:37 pm
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