“Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch,
Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark,
Shoots dangled and drooped,
Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates,
Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes.
And what a congress of stinks!–
Roots ripe as old bait,
Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich,
Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks.
Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.”
(Root Cellar by Theodore Roethke)
“He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ.” (Ephesians 2: 5)
My friend Bev Power took this photograph of a root cellar in Branch, a small community on the island of Newfoundland. Often, it was the contents of the root cellar that allowed families to get through the long winter months, when nothing grew, and even fish were not able to be caught. This would have been used in the days before refrigeration, in the days before supermarkets, in the days when people depended on themselves and God rather than on others. It may have appeared to some to be a forbidding place, dark, and dank, and a place of death, but as the poem shows, it was actually full of life.
On this Sunday morning, when we celebrate anew the Resurrection, when we come together as faith communities, let us remember that we are never more fully alive than when we are in Christ.
Almighty God, this day is made glorious by
The knowledge that you are with us
And that, in you,
We live
And move
And have our being
Even during those times
When nothing is apparent
To those watching
You are working in us
Causing us to grow
To change
To transform
May this Sunday be a day of rejoicing
A day to celebrate
A day to feel your life in us
Amen
