T.S. Eliot began his 20th Century masterwork The Wasteland with the declaration that April is the cruelest month, which is an affront to all our notions about spring, and rebirth, and resurrection in this month when the transforming Christian holiday of Easter most often falls. But this year, we got a sense of what the poet was talking about. It is not just the snow that made this seem like one of the most perverse winters on record, giving us both a white Thanksgiving and snowbound daffodils. It is the world at large. We anxiously hope for something better to emerge from beneath the chilling cover of war. Like shoots pushing up through the snow, this week the signs were encouraging.

And so we wait, accepting a winter that has overstayed its welcome, grateful that sleet and snow is for now the greatest threat in the sky over our neighborhoods, and mindful that the cruelties we suffer are minor compared to those who wake each day to the reality of oppression, war, drought, disease, and privation. We accept that the forces of nature and the forces of mankind all have their season and that the world moves on to transform itself –– sometimes according to our desires, and sometimes not. At some point –– in the kinder month of May perhaps –– the wait will end and we will once again devote ourselves to cultivating new life in our gardens and in our world.