‘To be or not to be . . . the Groundhog'

Two amazing fellow bloggers have recently posted entries that mentioned February and it’s character leader, the Groundhog. One even went as far as to add a definition for the groundhog and you all know how I love those definitions. I’ll have to be honest, up until I saw this entry, the only times I fondly thought about that little guy was in remembering that I had many friends who worked on the making of that movie “Groundhog Day” including a friend who is actually in one of the scenes. And more fondly still was when my first son was about 2- 2 ½ years old and on the way to his grandmother’s house we saw a groundhog. Try as he might to say the name of that animal, it would always come out as “hound-grog” – had me in tears then . . . still gets me going when I think of it today.

Anyway, I was looking at that definition again . . .

From Wikipedia:
"Groundhog Day or Groundhog's Day is a holiday celebrated United States and Canada on February 2nd. In weather lore, if a ground hog, also known as a woodchuck, marmot or ground squirrel, emerges from its burrow on this day and fails to see its shadow because the weather is cloudy, winter will soon end. If the groundhog sees its shadow, it will return into its burrow, and the winter will continue for 6 more weeks."

. . . and something hit me.

If you’ll notice – it’s never the people that scare the groundhog . . . it’s the shadow of himself that does him in.

We are oftentimes very much like the groundhog in so many ways. We get spooked by our own shadow – the demons we allow ourselves to hold on to – those vices that we all know we have. We allow them to take up residence within us and even on our supposed best days, they sneak up on us and scare the hell out of us, making us scamper back into our protective holes ultimately giving authority to the unending dreariness of our heart’s winter.

Oh to be the groundhog who alludes his oppressive shadow. Oh to give way to the birth of new things as we allow Spring to grace our hearts in a more timely manner.

Any good farmer knows that the only thing a hole is good for is for planting seeds of hope.

Hope for a good harvest.

Hope for what is still to come.

Here’s to climbing out of that hole and looking the other way . . .