In April, we look for signs of transformation. Not anything dazzling, you understand -- not in New England -- just any brave little shoots of green, to tell us that maybe, maybe the promise of Spring will be fulfilled. For all its beauty, the winter can seem so deep and so long that by the end of March when the wind's edge softens and the crocuses struggle up, we hardly remember what it feels like to just saunter out the door and leave it open behind us. Who were we way back then? Has the winter changed us, this time, in some way that will not pass with the lengthening days?

The transformation that is part of every growth cycle, every spiritual calendar, every life, is of course organically connected to the times of darkness and hunkering down. At the biological level, the formula is often far from ethereal -- think compost, think wildfires, think birth. We don't have a lot of choice about this -- no matter what we do there will be times of loss and pain, and times when, one way or another, we are just stuck indoors. But whether seasonal or circumstantial, the moments when something new ventures forth, or something beloved returns, are among the most powerful.

Forty years after the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the loss of his precious life and legendary leadership is still in many ways an unhealed wound. His comrades, too, both "the famous and the faceless," are beginning to leave us, and their vision and dedication will be hard to replace. Yet signs of the transformation King and other civil rights workers called forth are springing up, often in ground made ready by his legacy. New voices are speaking out, new terms are being coined, and new coalitions are being built, jubilantly answering King's call for "a multiracial army of the poor." When immigrants and Americans who identify as people of color are willing to reconsider inherited categories and put trust in each other as allies, many long-needed changes may be within reach.

The "winter soldiers" who testified at hearings organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War a few weeks ago were certainly signs of transformation, and in an act of great love brought their most shameful and horrific stories out of the silence and up into the light for the US public to reckon with. It will take equal courage and many years for their communities to help them continue that transformation, to bring the soldiers, and the civilians, the rape survivors, and the devastated families safely home. (If you haven't already done so, please visit www.ivaw.org [5] and hear more than what we've been able to excerpt here.) As Marge Piercy notes in her poem "Side Effects," not just individuals but intricate systems are wrecked by war. This winter, five years long now, has changed us.

The participants in the Winter Soldier gathering spoke about how their faith in the US government and military had been destroyed -- a painful loss, added to so many others they have endured. With their testimony, they have embraced the possibility that there might be better ways to aid democracy than by dropping bombs. The US government, unfortunately, continues on the old plan. Congress is busily undoing the hard work that went into limiting weapons and military training to the corrupt and bloodthirsty Indonesian military, and the Indonesian government has no intention of pausing to acknowledge the true impact of the Suharto regime or its army's more recent depredations in East Timor (now Timor-Leste). In the vacuum created by this denial, the Timorese will have great difficuluty emerging from their trauma and confronting the challenges that face their young democracy.

But the thing about Spring is this: You might miss it, but you can't stop it.

Sara Burke, Co-Editor