Signs of Spring

by Karen A. Bellenir

Early last month, I had a conversation with a winter-weary soul about signs of spring. She had noticed an abundance of robins and wondered if new arrivals were augmenting the population that lives here year round. I thought perhaps the juncos had departed for points north because I hadn’t seen any for a few days. She sighed. No. Juncos were still plentiful in her yard.

Local plant life offered more promise. We compared notes about sightings of daffodil sprouts, dogwood buds, and tentative forsythia blossoms. All unmistakable signs of spring’s imminent arrival. Yet, the thermometer and weather forecast refused to cooperate.

Despite the evidence of people wrapped in winter coats and regular announcements of school closings due to inclement weather, I held on to hope. Spring was coming. I could see it in the sky.

First, the days were getting longer. On March 10, we had eleven hours and forty-four minutes of daylight. On March 11, despite the fact that the switch to daylight saving time plunged my morning alarm back into darkness, we had three minutes more daylight: eleven hours and forty-seven minutes. The spring equinox, March 20, marked the time when daylight hours equaled nighttime hours, and the allotment of daylight minutes will keep increasing until the summer solstice on June 21. That will be our longest day. We’ll get about fourteen and three-quarters hours of daylight.

More easily visible indicators of spring’s impending arrival appear in the night sky—at least when it isn’t too cloudy to see. During early April evenings, Taurus the Bull and the Seven Sisters riding on his back are beginning to sink toward the horizon. In just a couple weeks, they’ll be gone. Orion will follow them. Currently, he is sliding steadily toward the west and will step out of the nighttime picture around the end of the month. His faithful canine companion will chase after him and disappear from our skies in mid-May.

The position of the Big Dipper also announces the coming of spring. In the early evening, you can find it rising in the north east, standing nearly upright on its handle. According to one native American account, the dipper’s bowl represents a bear, and its handle represents three pursing hunters. The bear comes out of its den and rises in the spring. Then, it crosses overhead during the summer. In the fall, the bear tires and the pursuers are able to shoot it with their bows and arrows. The bear dips to the horizon, and its blood seeps into tree leaves turning them red. The bear’s body rests in the ground, and a new bear rises in the spring so that the hunt can begin again.

Although the Big Dipper circles around the northern sky all year long, most constellations rise and set as the earth turns and change their positions slowly as Earth orbits the sun. Evening constellations of spring include the zodiacal constellations of Gemini, Cancer, Leo, and Virgo along with a host of others of lesser fame, such as Crater, Corvus, and Coma Berenices.

I invite you to wander outside on a clear night a look up.

[April 6, 2018; excerpted from the author’s newspaper column, which appears monthly in the Farmville Herald.]

An Open Letter to Skeptics

Dear Skeptic,

Many people insist on evidence before they believe something. They want to know what data exist, what verifications have been done, and how reliably a phenomenon can be repeated. They want to know that B always follows A. Such dependable results help define reality.

When religious people insist that they know something, skeptics ask for evidence. Real, hard and fast, physical evidence. Experimental data. Statistics. And, that's when the communication breakdown begins, because by the very definition of the terms used, spiritual matters are not physical. But that doesn't mean that there isn't any evidence. It just means that to examine the evidence you have to change your search parameters or use different tools. Consider the state of medicine when germs were first proposed as an agent of disease. Many doctors disbelieved the existence of these tiny organisms until new tools, microscopes, helped render them visible.

Much of the evidence for the spiritual component of reality exists in a nonmaterial domain. But because humans employ physical sensory experiences for communication, the language used to discuss spiritual topics includes metaphor, story, and paradox—linguistic tools that help the mind transcend its corporeal limits. Spiritual influences also affect the physical realm in ways that can be directly observed. Count the number of independent cultures that developed religious notions. Look at the numbers—historically and currently—of people who claim spiritual experiences. Examine artifacts from every human civilization, in every age, and in every type of medium. Do you find abundant attempts to express spiritual themes? Does this evidence suggest the possibility of a spiritual realm with religious meaning?

The word religion may stir up strong feelings. Bad things have been done in the name of religion. Bad things have also been done in the name of science. Bad things have been done in the name of politics, economics, and anthropology. Bad things have probably been done in every endeavor involving human beings. The very concept of bad, however, is a religious one. And, among religious people—just as among scientists—there are often disagreements about the best ways to interpret matters. These disagreements don't negate the phenomena about which they are centered; they merely underscore the fact that human knowledge is incomplete.

So, what do you believe? Are you willing to conduct your own experiments rather than rely on the second-hand reports of others?

New tools, new knowledge, and a new attitude toward experimentation can help build bridges that reach across the current physical-spiritual divide. Pier Press® wants to help. We're developing Bible study tools that let readers approach this sacred text in a way that preserves each individual's quest for experimentation and personal discovery. We're advocating for an arena where all people can discuss their observations and ask questions. Please join us. We think it will be mutually enlightening.

Respectfully yours,

Pier Press®

An Open Letter to Pastors

Dear Pastors and Ministry Leaders,

You already know your message isn't reaching many of the people about whom you care very deeply. Worse, your ideas are sometimes met with disparagement or derision. Your attempts to offer spiritual solace are met with skepticism. People don't typically say, "Wow, tell me more." Instead they challenge, "Yeah, prove it." Welcome to the age of science.

But, please don't despair. It's an exciting age where physical discoveries are revealing some of the components that underpin material reality. Curious individuals have done the laboratory equivalents of looking under rocks and lifting logs to poke at what lurks beneath. They've watched and meticulously recorded what happened. They've assembled observations and made predictions about other things that could happen. Creative people have figured out ingenious ways to test those predictions and develop new ways to understand their findings. They draw conclusions, and their colleagues gleefully challenge them, "Yeah, prove it." This is how scientifically minded individuals explore, learn, and grow in knowledge about the world and universe in which we live. The poking and testing are part of the fun.

This kind of interactive discovery contrasts sharply with traditional methods used to scrutinize spiritual matters and communicate results. Many discussions about the nonphysical aspects of reality begin with appeals to specific authorities. From defined beginning points, they untangle threads of logic. Ultimately, favored interpretations find themselves endorsed as true. These are tools developed by philosophers from centuries gone by, and they aren't working well in the current age. Just as small children outgrow a stage where a parental "Because I said so" is sufficient, society has outgrown the stage where dictates from authorities are enough to satisfy.

Historically, the Christian church embraced scientific knowledge by incorporating into its theological positions classical Greek notions about how the universe worked. During the first millennium of the church's existence, when Plato and Aristotle remained unchallenged, this tactic helped create a unified worldview that could be embraced by spiritual leaders and scientists of the age. Today, modern science has moved beyond ancient Platonic and Aristotelean ideas, and the time for spiritual leaders to do the same is long overdue.

Please join us as we try to create an atmosphere where all people can discuss their observations and ask questions.

Faithfully yours,

Pier Press®