Resurrection hymn

From the ponds in our prairie wetland: Chorus frogs and the Risen Christ

Christos anesti!

At Easter, the acoustic backdrop of the farm is frog song. Underneath the robin’s refrain before dawn, underneath the crowing cockerel, there’s a seamless sound-tapestry of trilling that comes from the prairie potholes in the wetland that surrounds the farm. There are many species singing in many octaves even now as I write this. Being from the Midwest, I can tease out the thread that is the bullfrog’s croak from the green frog’s pizzicato notes from the canary-like whistle of the spring peeper. The spring peepers are my favorite choristers.

I’ve carried around the parable of spring peepers for a long time and preached it on and off again for the last twenty years, so you might already have heard my likening of a tiny amphibian’s life cycle to God’s work of Salvation. If the root of the word ‘parable’ means that we toss out two unlike things next to each other so that, in being observed side by side, they might reveal something new about the other, “The Easter Frog” is certainly a parable. Turns out, chorus frogs like the spring peeper are about as unlikely a perfect revelation of Resurrection as you could imagine. At least on this side of that great mystery revealed in a garden in Jerusalem two thousand years ago.

Some of us came up in Christian traditions that made no space for doubt or reason. The singularly bonkers proposition (to use our Bishop’s preferred adjective for the claims of our faith) that Jesus Christ rose from the dead is a bridge too far for logical, science-loving minds. Some minds end up leaving the Church, taking their longing hearts with them. And some of us come back, not because our skeptical questions have been answered but because we are drawn back in by something embodied. Maybe because of the Sacraments. Maybe because the choir needs more tenors.

Some of us come back thanks to singing frogs.

So, spring peepers are usually heard and almost never seen. They’re tiny, the size of my own thumbnail. You’ll think I’m making this bit up, but I’m not: They bear a cross on their bodies. Pseudacris crucifer (crucifer meaning ‘cross-bearer) is their Latin name, because there’s an X-shaped cross on their back. Their range stops a bit east of the farm, so I’m mostly likely to hear them when driving with my windows down on my way to the Chrism Mass at the Cathedral in Faribault, Minnesota on Holy Tuesday. I worry about our Northern frog species, because research is showing that global increases in average winter temperatures mean that they’re waking up earlier and earlier each spring, sometimes before there is anything for them to eat. (Scripture seems to indicate that the newly resurrected need to eat, yes?) But that worry is for another post.

Rewind a few months with me. The bonkers part of this parable started back in late fall, when the frog’s body sensed the dark and cold coming on. God’s genius has bestowed strange, extraordinary abilities on the spring peeper – gifts and graces probably outside the creature’s own control. In lay naturalist terms: As winter approaches, these frogs’ blood glucose levels go through the roof (not unlike kids with Easter baskets at this very moment, am I right?). The fluid inside all of a peeper’s cells turns to antifreeze. What’s between the cells stays watery and starts to get slushy as temperatures drop. Every frog here at Good Courage Farm found a cozy, muddy bit of a permanent pond last fall, and some time in November it took the last breath it would take for about 6 months. And then the frogs all froze. Solid. Frozen lungs don’t breathe. Frozen hearts stop beating.

Here’s a link to a PBS page with fun FAQ answers about frozen frogs. A frozen frog is, by many definitions, clinically dead. But since this state can be spontaneously reversed in many reptiles and amphibians, we’re going to need to find another word for what’s happening here, at least philosophically. Brumination is science’s term…aaaand… yeah, the frog still looks dead. But we have to ask, as Easter people and frog fans: What is death, again?

Fast forward to right now — April, in Minnesota: In the spring (you’d guessed that by their name, yes?), the peepers thaw. When temperatures warm, the muddy waters and the frogs’ bodies actually return to life. I can’t even imagine what this is like. Was there a light at the end of a long tunnel? Is the waking painful? What have they been thinking about, these tiny creatures, for lo, these six months?

Once awakened from death, though, it’s clear what the spring peeper thinks about. Come Eastertide, all they want to do is sing. Being resurrected, all they want to do is find their peeps (I know, sorry) and cling to one another. They just want to form a choir and sing.

I feel ya, frogs.
Alleluia!
Alleluia!

Can I get an alleluia?

I love the science of this. And there’s mystery in it still, for me. Like, I can’t guess how many frogs are outside my window in the wetland beyond the deer fence, out there proclaiming the Resurrection. One voice starts in, and multiplied it soon becomes an Easter chorus. I can’t understand the language of their hymn, but I’d be willing to bet they’re singing Psalm 118:

“I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of God.”

And there’s power in this Easter chorus: My windows shut against it can’t stop the frog song from filling my house and my head. They are so loud, the singing resurrected frogs. For a season, I’ll wake to this choir daily. I’ll fall asleep to it, or likely be prevented from sleep by it. This is the song-force of life abundant promised to us in Christ. It won’t be closed out. It won’t be silent. It won’t remain in the dark earth.

Here’s what it comes down to for me: I love the gifts of science. And I believe that all things were created through Christ, and not one thing came into being without Christ, as John’s Gospel offers. And I can feel in my bones that all of Creation is redeemed and renewed in and through Christ, as Paul writes to the churches is Rome. My reason and my love of Creation inform and renew my faith, and vice versa. Christ is not only the firstborn of the dead but the very pattern of Resurrection. I can believe it, in part, because I can see this pattern — this truth — in Creation all around me. Green blades are actually rising from the grain Jen buried in our field. The ancient grafted stumps of fruit trees are blooming. The silence of death is overtaken by birdsong and frogsong.

Resurrection is a hymn that all of Creation sings.

Where are you hearing its strains, beloved friends?

Easter blessings to you all. Christ is risen, indeed.