Springtime, Dinosaurs, and Hope

With the weather starting to turn really lovely, the early flowers fading and the green leaves coming in, I find myself wanting to meditate a little on the season. There is a certain quietude in this period, as the early rush to flower starts transitioning into summer, but the aggression and fervor of the plant and animal life is apparent. The green stuff that creeps on the ground is sweeping up as much territory as it can, racing to put out leaves before the competition picks up; the baby squirrels are off to the races, recklessly throwing themselves into life (and often out of it when they meet a careless driver); the spring birds are staking their claims and squaring off against all comers. They are all beautiful, but they are all in competition, in life-or-death races to get to the next goalpost—to plant a seed, to find a mate, to eat, to survive attack. The earth groans.

I can’t help but think of the recent study that showed the Chixculub meteor likely struck in the springtime (in the northern hemisphere at least). Many, many kinds of creatures would have looked up that day from their fervent race and seen a fell light in the heavens. There is something startlingly poignant about it, something heartrending even. Yet it seems to me to be also a bearer of unexpected joy, as so many catastrophes are. Christ reveals Himself in His creatures, but one day He comes in person. The day of visitation is a double-entendre; it is cataclysmic, but the rivers clap their hands and the hills lift up their voices. And springtime is nothing if not emblematic of the sense of hope, the expectation that the dry little seed dropped by a long-dead perennial will become a thriving living thing.

I think too of how the springtime race that all living things engage in has been going on in one form or another for so long. It is not a mystery to science why that should be—we know how the position and rotation of the Earth produce the seasons, and how living things must adapt to that—but it is a sort of mystery to the heart. It whispers of eternity, and of an eternity not at all barren but filled with living creatures doing what they do. Then the vision fades, and one is left with a deep pining, yet also a deep hope. There is love in all these secret places, squirreled away where we stumble on them unexpectedly. I find myself torn between wanting to invite everyone into these places, and fearing the callousness of other people. We shun joy far more often than we realize; and I think if we fully realized how much we do so, the knowledge would be devastating.

I think of the ancient dinosaurs as though they were alive and well, as though they had never suffered any such destruction. There is a certain perhaps misguided sentimentality driving this, perhaps a thought that I could almost make them live again through my own power, by wishing it to be; but I sense there is also a thread of truth running parallel, and if I can swing from my own delusion to the bright thread, I’ll have something valuable to save away for myself, something that ties me to the mysterious love of God. I do not know His mind, but it is as if He winks without quite saying anything. Yet I struggle to trust.

Deep down, it is my own ego which keeps me from constantly tasting joy. My mind has long worn tunnels of fear through hidden parts of the psyche, and flees into them when something spooks it. I snarl at the hand that would feed me. But little by little the tunnels wear away, and the landscape is smoothed, until it is like stepping onto the dewy grass of a broad moor, touched by the breath of relief and the warm of the sun glowing through the low fog. Hope is speechless, and has much in it of leaving behind the dead stuff you’ve been living in, like a snake shedding its skin. It works slow, like water wearing away stone; but just as certain. When it has done its work, Wisdom begins to visit, and Wisdom brings Joy. The air clears, and there is finally room to run!

When I return to work in the studio, I do not think my purpose there will be to try and bring the dinosaurs to life, as if the meteor had not struck, or as if we humans by our power are somehow destined to resurrect them. It is not to feed a subtle despair that arises from seeing ourselves as the only hope. Rather, it is to create a sort of window into their time, so that we can be joyful at having glimpsed them a little. I have other projects in mind too that don’t have to do with paleontology, and the goal with these is very similar in spirit. Every good thing is a gift, and good things tell truths which point back to the Author of truth. But these things are veiled, so that the act of discovery reminds us of the romance we have abandoned. In Heaven, the romance is full. Divine eros is open.

I hope in the coming days I will remember to take time and notice the world of nature as it continues to move and grow. It is so easy to be consumed by screen time and, in my case, a desire to insulate myself and feel safe from the world, to the point that I might not even leave the house all day, and don’t walk or see the sun. I find myself doing the opposite of the plants and animals outside, curling up and passing in and out of torpor while they are going hard at their daily work. They are too simple to give way to despair; but I struggle. I fixate on whatever disturbs me and feel unable to move until I’ve thoroughly masticated it. It is so difficult to let go of the feeling that I must control every influence I come in contact with in order to survive. The Lenten season teaches us to get control over ourselves, beginning with the stomach. If we try to live like the animals, we instead become deranged because our inner needs are different. But if we overcome our animal passions, we become like them in our strength and simplicity. We are united to the animal world and to nature more deeply when we subdue ourselves.