William D. Waltz
from Spring Arrives in Snow Boots
As an amateur entomologist and a professional daydreamer, I have long admired the cicada and its metamorphosis from grubby troll to clumsy aviator. Unlike its elegant cousin, the butterfly whose larva transforms amongst tender foliage and sunshine, the cicada’s juvenile inhabits a dark underworld of roots, worms, and loam before it rolls away the proverbial stone, clambers up the nearest tree, and begins life anew in the green canopy.
For me, born and raised a Lutheran, one resurrection, not surprisingly, looms larger than the rest. Yet, the image that I carry in my heart isn’t so much Christ on the cross staring out over Golgotha. Instead, it’s tulips pushing through the last snowfall just outside the stained glass windows. While I ruminated, uncomfortable in my Sunday slacks, on bulbs and earthen tombs, a new evangelical movement was ascending. And, so it was that “born-again” entered our lexicon late last century and with it a generation of rebooted individuals began to roam the streets.