Lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land (Song 2:11-12 KJV).

I was reared on the King James Version of the Scofield Reference Bible, and as a kid this passage from the Song of Solomon always filled me with awe and curiosity: I knew Michigan turtles and their habits well, and the only noise I ever heard from a turtle was the splash they made when I made dashes to snatch them from their sunny resting  spots.  So to discover that in Bible times turtles actually sang to welcome spring was a wonder to me.

Then, lo, the later translations came along and spoiled my treasured misconception:

See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land.

"The Turtle Dove"

So the KJV translators had meant turtle dove,  not turtle.

Nonetheless, at this time of the year when bird life is singing a sayonara serenade to winter, I still like to think of  singing turtles rejoicing in expectation of the arrival of spring.

I love the changing of the seasons.  In a world of constant change—politics, economics, employment figures, cultural shifts, computer hardware and software upgrades, ever-smarter cell phones—I HAVE to go outdoors.  My point-seven-two walk to and from work provides me at least a small daily dose of staying in touch with what is unchanging.  While change does happen in the natural world—especially in the north where all four seasons are dramatically different from each other—this change is expected, regular, normal, and older than humanity.  My soul craves such orderly constancy—constancy that has absolutely nothing to do with me.

Skunk cabbages, trillium, and jacks-in-the-pulpit unfold in that order at the marsh verges after the winter thaw every year.  Crows steal songbird eggs, gang up, and harass owls and hawks every year.  Newly arrived song sparrows sit on bush tops and celebrate life and procreation every nesting season. Robins, cedar waxwings, and starlings compete for old crabapples every spring.  Cicadas brreeee and katydids skritch every waning summer.  Sugar maples and sumacs flame every fall.  Snow turns my landscape drabness to light every winter.  Year after year after year.

And all of this occurs regardless of what happens on Wall Street, who is in the White House, when broadcast TV is going digital, who has been born and who has died, whether or not Osama bin Laden still survives, or whether or not I choose to have my molars crowned or pulled.

In the natural world, if I and my neighbors have not messed it up too badly, I can forget the vicissitudes of my life, and find both confidence and hope in the constancy of earth’s life as promised long ago by our Creator:

As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease (Genesis 8:22).

I, you, and our children need to deliberately spend time outdoors if for no other reason, as Henry David Thoreau said, than to “not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito’s wing that falls on the rails.”  Blessed constancy from the hand and plan of God gives my soul a sunny resting spot.

[Source of girl and turtle dove painting: The Turtle Dove by Sophie Gengembre Anderson.]
[Source of sunning turtles: by OldOnliner]