“New” | Reflection by Georgia Cosgrove, Development Director

Reflecting on the word “new” seemed like a good way to ease back into home and work life on the morning after returning from our first actual vacation since the onset of COVID. Our travels were filled new experiences, visits to new places, and new insights into many aspects of the complicated history of our nation through the lenses of our founding fathers and their relationships with the institution of slavery. Visits to Jefferson’s Monticello, the Charlottesville campus of the University of Virginia, and Washington’s Mt. Vernon, which were all built and kept running by many hundreds of enslaved people, against the backdrop of a genocidal war in Ukraine and the horrors being inflicted on its people, made for some heavy lifting to try to weave all of this into my Christian faith grounding. How can the concept of a God who loves us unconditionally be reconciled with these atrocities? Not exactly the type of quandary one expects while “vacationing”!

But something clicked as I looked out my window this morning and saw a sea of blooming crocuses and budding daffodils. It occurred to me that spring is our reliable reminder that beauty and life spring forth after the cold days of winter, after fires and violent storms, and after the darkest days of each of our lives. Those are the rewards for holding onto faith and hope, for continuing to love one another and walk forward together. As I pondered all of this, I was reminded of this poem that I wrote many years ago:

I Apologize!

Forgive me!

I’d have stayed,

but the air was sultry, the lilacs hypnotic

and a woodpecker thrummed a summoning drumbeat.

How could I?

No wall could best the lure of spring’s tonic,

no conjured task had strength to brace me

against pull of warmed earth.

Guilty as charged

of clawing back mulch

to coax amethyst asparagus from buried crowns,

of combing through pea vines for ripe pods to plunder.

I did it,

I seized the jewels the day offered as enticement

to trade winter’s worn, dull cloak

for the shimmering vest of spring!