Thursday, March 4, 2010

Resonance

Do re mi fa so...

Looking out the window this morning I see that the earth is beginning to resonate.

Let us not be unscientific in our language here. Strictly speaking, resonance occurs when you touch something in just the way it is meant to be touched and it breaks into song.

It has been six months since the sunlight took on the peculiarly golden slant it acquires every September. I know that the earth is only now emerging from the slumber to which that light alluded.

Yet resonance is no gentle phenomenon,* and March is no gentle month. I remember the teaching from kindergarten: even if March comes in like a lamb, you can bet it will go out like a lion.

Therein lies, I wonder, a principle of nature. New life arrives amid violence. April could not be born from February without a tumultuous March, just as babies cannot be born from their mother without labor pains. Positive feedback mechanisms, resonance, are required in order to overthrow the status quo.

Indeed, Paul the Apostle tells us in the passage called the high peak of Scripture that
"the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now", "in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God." (Romans 8: 22, 20b-21)
Even the freedom of glory which is the final restoration of humanity and of the world will require a tumultuous transition.

I further wonder: what sort of resonance does the human heart display?

* Just ask the Tacoma Narrows Bridge

1 comment:

Josh said...

Actually, the phrase is "March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb." The thought is still valid, since the lion part is at the change of the seasons :)