Spring: A Spiritual Biography of the Season

As winter's austere power begins to fade, we notice the first signs of vigor and life returning to the world: delicate crocuses pushing through the damp earth; frogs croaking in the barely thawed ponds; the year's first warm breeze on our faces.These first sure signs of spring bolster our spirits and remind us of the eternal cycle of death and rebirth, and also--more poignantly--of the steady march of time and our own advancing years. With each successive spring, it seems, we cherish the promise of renewed life more and more.These thoughtfully chosen writings, poems and meditations--from Robert Frost, Lisa Couturier, William Blake and Lady Sarashina to the eighth-century Chinese poet Tu Fu and many others--both celebrate spring's re-emergence of life and evoke the season's delicate balance of growth and decay, youth and maturity, innocence and experience.

Gary Schmidt, a Newbery Award winner, teaches literature at Calvin College. He is coeditor of Summer; Autumn; and Winter, volumes in the Spiritual Biography of the Season series (all SkyLight Paths). He is also author of Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, a Newbery Honor book; Mara's Stories: Glimmers in the Darkness, a Fanfare 2002 Horn Book honor list book; Straw Into Gold and, with Lawrence Kushner, In God's Hands.

Susan M. Felch teaches literature at Calvin College. She is coeditor of Summer; Autumn; and Winter, volumes in the Spiritual Biography of the Season series. She also edited The Collected Works of Anne Vaughan Lock; Bakhtin and Religion: A Feeling for Faith and The Self: Beyond the Postmodern Crisis.