AT THE CHURCH O’ THE PINES, Sparky the Cardinal is singing his fool head off this morning. Which, as Spring has obstinately decided to stop being Spring and go back to being Winter, is a fine and wonderful thing.

He chirps and chortles merrily and seems unfazed by the snow and the cold. High in their white pine aerie our Bald Eagle friends cared for their clutch of eggs through a week of hard rain, and now through more days and nights of snow and cold. They, too, seem undeterred. We do worry about them, and the early arriving swallows and bluebirds and other seasonal members of our congregation, all dealing bravely with the vagaries of weather and their woodland existence. But they persist, successfully it would seem, and continue to make life more beautiful and meaningful for the caretakers, the seed-and-suet-providers. And we are grateful.

(Drawing by some guy named Douglas Wood)