Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Welcome to Your Spring!

Satellite captures moment of spring equinox. Image by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center via Flickr CC BY-2.0

Welcome to Spring!

If you live in the Northern Hemisphere, today marks the vernal equinox, the first day of astronomical spring. (For those Down Under, this day heralds the arrival of autumn.)

The return of spring signals longer days with more sunlight and warmer temperatures. Even though it may take a while to see blooming flowers (especially in Canada!), the spring equinox is a reminder that brighter days are ahead.

But what exactly is an equinox?

We have two of them each year, in spring and fall. Each one marks the day when the sun is directly above the Earth’s equator (from our perspective), and night and day are of equal length.

The sun’s path then crosses the celestial equator (an imaginary line or circle in the sky directly above the Earth’s equator), and heads north or south, depending on the time of year.

At the spring equinox, the sun is rising into the Northern Hemisphere: it’s our turn for renewal.

But no matter where you live on the planet or what time of year it is, you can experience a new season of rebirth in your life.

Your new beginning comes when the Son rises in your life.

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Posted on by Lori Cartmell

Create Your Own BC/AD Pivot Point

Image of Anno Domini inscription on Windsor Castle, England, by Leo Reynolds via Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

It’s natural to divide your life into “before” and “after,” isn’t it?

We mentally calculate whether something happened before or after certain important events in our lives.

We might say that such-and-such happened before we moved to Boston, or after we got married. We may recall that another thing happened after we had our son but before the twins were born.

Ancient cultures did something similar. Those with monarchies would mark events in relation to what king was on the throne at the time. They’d say that something happened in the 9th year of the reign of King so-and-so.

Certainly, most of us will divide our lives into pre-and post-pandemic eras. March of 2020 was a clear demarcation point between our previous “normal” life and one dominated by COVID-19.

The dividing lines of our lives will be different for all of us, but what most of the world has in common is the use of the same calendar system to mark off years. This system has its own before-and-after pivot point.

For instance, most of us just celebrated the start of AD 2022.

What does the “AD” mean, anyway? Or “BC” for that matter?

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