Waking

Holland Michigan has many faces.  In the fall the trees blush as people don hats and flannel.  Winter's drifts of snow promise to turn pulling out of a driveway into a game of chicken and a drive down the block into an adventure.  Parades march along eighth street in spring while the venders proffer various delicious methods of clogging your arteries, all in the name of the rows upon rows of the flowers that line the streets.  I've watched as Holland has worn these different masks for a few years, but the one I had never seen is the one she wears during the summer.  That is, until 2011.

Come June Holland sheds its mobs of tourists and street vendors as the delirium of Tulip Time fades with May, only to come back again with Independence Day.  Thursday sees 8th street closed down as magicians, musicians, and other performers flaunt their respective skills, winning the occasional dollar or fist of change.  Finding a secluded place on the beach (or parking, for that matter) becomes nigh impossible with the masses sporting their skin and swimwear.  Everywhere you look the trees stand full and proud, wrapped in the green of mature leaves.  The smell of the neighbors charcoal grill wafts through my window, a tease.  The sun shows his face with a gladness and generosity reserved only for these middling months.

Amidst these blessings however a profound change takes place.  Hope, this place that I adore, falls asleep.  Many students remain through May and June taking summer classes, some even to July.  Eventually even they leave, and Hope becomes silent.  Buildings dedicated to the arts, sciences, humanities, and even our beloved Dimnent become silent, empty save for the occasional professor or maintenance worker.  As I walked past them I realized that they have ceased to hold great meaning, becoming little more to me than blocks of stone, brick and glass.  This is Hope in slumber, a house whose curtains are drawn and whose family is gone.  There is a lesson in this.  Chapels of stone and groves of pine in and of themselves do not fill the soul.  Vast structures built for knowledge are not sources of learning.  Hope lives and breathes in the lives of its students, of its faculty and staff.  Hope is nothing without its people.

But now another change comes.  I can feel Hope's heartbeat again.  The sores and stiffness of long sleep are being stretched and smoothed away as buildings are readied for the coming year.  Every now and then I see new faces filling dorms, patrolling the sidewalks and sitting in the grove.  Music, fresh, strong, and life-giving rings out from the windows and open doors of Dimnent.  My soul grows eager for the chapel be filled again, to hear the chorus of my people.  There is a richness that God has grown in this place.  I feel it stirring in my guts.  My arms tremble with it, this gladness.  My lungs are full of lion's-breath.  Good is coming, good words and good work and good people.  May it come all the more swiftly.