by Claudia A. Whitworth
Editor, Roanoke Tribune
“Spring has sprung! The grass has riz! Where last year’s careless driver is!” This one-sentence phrase is one of many that once appeared intermittently on “Burma Shave” signs along the highways, one at a time every mile or so apart – if there’s anybody left old enough to remember the.
A couple of intermittent warm days has given some the false illusion that “Spring has sprung” in our area in particular while in other parts of this country and especially abroad Mother Nature is raging an unparalleled fury. But every beginning has an ending and a new beginning follows every ending. Every morn is followed by evening and each evening precedes a glorious morn with the darkest part of the night occurring just before dawn. Thus continues the perpetual normal cycle of existence on this earthly plane. Yet many natural occurrences throughout the world today are far from normal.
We are reminded in the Baha’i Writings “Absolute repose does not exist in nature. All things either make progress or lose ground.” In animal and plant life alike, progress continues from infancy to different stages of maturity and then begins to steadily decline until the inevitable transformation into the different matter. Man alone has the intellect and capacity to alter this progression. With the vast advancement in science and technology over the past century, it is becoming uncommonly clear that the more knowledge and freedom we acquire the less we appreciate it or apply it to the common good. Likewise the more time we save with hi-tech devices, appliances, and other conveniences, the fewer constructive things we do with them or the people who benefit from them, often including our own immediate family. Especially of freedom does the cliché, “Abuse it and lose it,” apply. The ability to self-discipline freedoms is what separates the spiritually genuine from the counterfeit.
This Naw-Ruz may we reflect on the unparalleled freedoms that continue to escalate during this most unique period in the history of mankind on this planet. Consider also the phenomenal increase in knowledge and the quantum leap in science and technology over the past 170+ years of this world, estimated to be millions of years old, that far exceed all former ages combined! Could it be that having reached physical and mental maturity, mankind is now entering the phase of spiritual maturity through which world peace must and will inevitably come, once all things are made new?
March 20 of each year marks the official beginning of Spring, the vernal equinox when the sun equally illuminates the earth. Also at sundown on March 20 of each year, the Baha’i New Year (Naw-Ruz) begins. This sacred day marks the first on the Baha’i calendar (of 19 months of 19 days each) preceded by Intercalary Days (4 in ordinary and 5 each leap year) making up the difference in the 365-day year.
It would appear that “Spring had indeed – physically and spiritually sprung!” – or has it?
