Resurrection, renewal and hope are words that are synonymous with the Easter season. They are words that never lose their strength or their value because some stories never grow old. The Easter season, the most holy of holidays on the Christian calendar, is one of those stories.
Supporting the Easter season is the season of spring. The world, after a winter season with cold winds, frosty mornings, and bare trees, seems to burst overnight into a beautiful palette of a thousand shades of green and the bright colors of many spring flowers. The spring season is, indeed, a season of renewal. In today's world, we need that feeling of hope, maybe now more than we have ever needed it before.
I am going to diverge a moment here, but I promise to "hem the hog in the ditch" before I finish, or, at least, I am going to try.
In the early 60s, when I started school in White Springs, each day began with a song of positivity and hope in the late Virginia Bell's class:
"Good morning to you!
Good morning to you!
We're all in our places,
With Sunshine on faces,
And this is the way,
To start a new day.
Good morning to you,
Good morning to you,
Whatever the weather,
We'll make it together,
And this is the way,
To start a new day."
My brother, Jerry Lawrence Bullard, started public kindergarten in 1969-70. It was the first fully desegregated class at then-White Springs Elementary. The following year, full desegregation came about, and Jerry Lawrence was taught that year by the late Sadie Turner, a beloved educator whose husband, the late Willie G. Turner, became the first African American elected to the White Springs Town Council. In Mrs. Turner's class, first graders sang:
"The more we get together,
together, together
The more we get together,
the happier we'll be.
For your friends are my friends,
And, my friends are your friends,
The more we get together,
The happier we'll be."
Here's the point: those childhood songs reminded us we were all in the same boat and that we needed to help and support each other. That unity, rather than division, was so important. They gave us hope and, on a daily basis, drove home the central themes of this season: resurrection and renewal. Each day "was" and "is" a new day, a new beginning. The songs of early childhood. If we think about the words and the lessons taught in those words, we will know...we can go back and glean golden truths that will still hold us in good stead.
From the Eight Mile Still on the Woodpecker Route north of White Springs, wishing everyone a good week.
