Spring officially begins on Sunday, Palm Sunday. On that day there will be 12 hours of sunlight and 12 hours of darkness. The winter darkness is gone for a while. As one drives around the Valley, one sees the various trees in blossom. Unless one has seasonal allergies, the arrival of blossoming trees is most welcome.

Nowhere is this annual event more admired than in Japan. This coming week, the cherry blossoms will be in full bloom throughout Japan. Nowhere in Japan is the cherry blossom more admired, almost worshipped than in Kyoto, the ancient and still religious capital of Japan. 25 years ago, I spent several months in a Zen monastery in the northern mountains, near Nagoya – in the Japanese Alps. It had been a difficult winter for me – living a very austere life.

So, at cherry blossom, time, I took a train from the small town of Fujimicho to Kyoto. I’m very proud of that, since I had to figure out the signs, written in Kanji characters of the Japanese language. Kyoto is the only major city in Japan not bombed in World War II. The temples, built centuries ago, still stand. And the cherry trees are magnificent. It’s a national holiday when the blossoms come out.

To the Japanese, it’s a quasi-religious event. People make tea out of the blossoms; they eat them; they take photos; and they have picnics under the blossoming and beautiful pink petals.

Over a hundred years ago, the Imperial Government of Japan sent 1000 cherry trees to Washington D.C., as a gesture of peace between the two countries. They were planted around the Tidal Basin, near the Jefferson Memorial and other national monuments. Those original trees were infested with insects and had to be burned. Japan sent another 2000 trees, and some of those originals still stand.

Immediately after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, someone chopped down some of the trees, and guards had to be posted to protect the remaining ones.

Today, the National Cherry Blossom Festival is celebrated in D.C. Over a million people come from all over to admire the beautiful blossoms, which are now beginning to bloom.

While they are in bloom, they are an iconic symbol of life. Cherry blossoms don’t last long, maybe a couple of weeks. They appear, they are brilliant in their beauty and then they’re gone.

It becomes a metaphor of the rhythm of life. We are here for short time, we have our moment of brilliant beauty, and then we fade away.

Thus, the cherry blossom reminds us of the fleeting gift of life. Now is the time we begin the Holy Week of the last week of the life of Jesus. Until the Sunday after next, our liturgy follows the passion and death of Christ.  Then, in a glorious center of our religion, like the cherry blossom, we celebrate the triumph pf life over death in the full blossom of the Resurrection.

Go Back