I decided to make a new custom image header for the blog. I choose a theme that corresponds to the current season: Spring. It’s about that time here at Christian University. The semester is over bar finals; the average temperature is steadily rising, and the grass is greener than it was last week.

Spring is a particular favorite of mine. The blossoming flowers, colors galore, and the maturation of trees’ leaves has always resonating a bit of solace in me. I couldn’t help but to read over a couple of passages from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Nature, the chapter entitled “Nature.” I thought I’d give those of you who visit us here a quote to go with the new image header and to ring in the spring feeling.

“The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, — he is my creature, and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece.”