A storm passed through our area two days ago.  The storm brought rain, wind, hail, and tornados.  It tore up car windshields, business structures and homes.  There were some close calls but very few people suffered severe injury.  Although destructive, the storm was typical for spring.  This week the Bradford Pear trees exploded their white confetti blossoms making the distinction between hail and bloom fuzzy.  You never know what will happen in March.

Today the daytime is as long as the nighttime marking the pinnacle that nudges us out of winter and into spring regardless of the temperature outside.  It has to do with light.  With this rhythm and increase of light comes renewal.  The trees, grasses, seeds, and animals (including mosquitos) wake, find their identity again and make fruit.  Things grow.

In the midst of storms and dark hours it’s sometimes hard to know where we are or who we are.  Reading and researching about our kindred ancestors brings to light that they also had storms.  They have passed from their storms and earthly springs now, but they continue.  How?

Our kindred’s experiences, decisions,  and writings make them alive to us. But wait . . . there’s more.  From a recent article titled “Our Identity and Our Destiny”, Callister says:

“A glimpse beyond the veil tells us that the records of history do not end at death but continue to mark man’s unlimited achievements.  Victor Hugo, with almost a spiritual X-ray, saw the possibilities after death:

The nearer I approach the end, the plainer I hear around me the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me . . . For half a century I have been writing my thoughts in prose and verse;  history . . . I have tried all.  But I feel I have not said a thousandth part of what is in me.  When I go down to the grave, I can say, like so many others, “I have finished my day’s work,” but I cannot say, “I have finished my life.”  My day’s work will begin again the next morning.  The tomb is not a blind alley;  it is a thoroughfare . . . My work is only beginning.”

We have some magnificent people who came before us.  In the words of C.S. Lewis, “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which . . . you would be strongly tempted to worship .  . . THERE ARE NO ORDINARY PEOPLE.”  Our kindred dead were no ordinary people either.