He is Risen
I am late to this blog. It has been a full and rich Easter weekend spent with beloved family. We hosted over 20 people here at FoxHaven and the feasting and the fun was non-stop. I am so in love with my family. Included in the festivities this year were our mothers. My mother is 84 and my husband’s mother is 97. What a treat it was to have these two Elder-women take their seats at our table. We know how blessed we are that they both continue to enjoy good health and that they can make the trek to join in. These days are precious.
I love old women. I love these two old women. I love the lines on their wizened faces and the transparent grace of their hands. I love the stories. I love the memories. I love the look in their eyes - a deep well of seeing that seems to look inward as much as it looks outward. I love the ease of their full throated laughter. I strive to be an old woman such as these. I am getting closer and closer.
Eastertide may well be my favourite time of the year. It sets a frame for my understanding of the depth of life like no other. This year seems extra special to me. Not only because we hosted our families and the sun shone, but because I have spent the better part of the last few years delving deeply into the symbolism of the Christian story. The greatest story ever told. The culmination of the very pattern of existence can be seen in this story. In the springtime. After the sugaring. It is not so much a religious story to me as it is a spiritual story. There is a difference. I have come to appreciate how this story, dare I say it, like fairytales and myths, keeps on happening. The universal patterns speak as much to me in 2024 as they did to a ragged group of disciples some 2000 years ago.
I was driving on country roads on Maundy Thursday night as the sun began to set. It was a purple and golden sunset. The rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar was playing on my iTunes. I was singing along.
“My mind is clearer now, at last all too well, I can see where we all soon will be. If you strip away the myth from the man, you will see where we all soon will be. Jesus!…”
As the globus sun dipped below the horizon and the stars began to appear, I thought about what that first Holy Thursday must have been like. How a simple meal became an archetypal ritual and how eternity does fall into time, over and over again. This particular Holy Thursday eve, I was driving home laden with a Persian feast prepared with love by my Muslim friend. She was fasting in Ramadan but she prepared a feast for my family to be shared over the Easter weekend. Muslim and Christian. Teacher and student. Fasting and feasting. The paradox of spirit and matter. The miracle of eternity falling into time. Again.
Take and eat. This is my body. Drink deeply. This is my blood. Do this in remembrance…
On Good Friday I sat in the company of family members who know a thing or two about suffering. Surgery and illness are powerful teachers. It is so hard to witness the suffering of those we love. What do we truly know about suffering? About sacrifice? About making sacred what comes to us? Maybe all we know is that it stretches us, to the limit. When we are so stretched, do we open wide our arms and our hearts, or do we shrink and become bitter and small? A Jewish man hanging on a tree reminds us that even brutality can be offered up, forgiven, even transcended? Whether a surgeon’s knife, chemotherapy concoctions, or our own impotence in the face of suffering have caused the pain, when we most feel forsaken, isn’t that when we can discover what love can touch?
‘Tis a holy thing to love what death can touch.
In the apocryphal stories of Holy Saturday, when the death-filled quiet descends, when the despair of a broken dream threatens, we are told that Christ harrowed hell. The ancient stories tell us that He descended into the abyss and redeemed the World Parents. Adam and Eve are exalted. The day between the unbearable suffering of Good Friday and the promised resurrection of Easter Sunday, belongs to the World Parents. I love this. I love that the story makes a space for the fallen ones, the forsaken ones, and yes, even the guilty ones. I hold this story against all the transgressions, failures, and missteps of so many mothers and fathers that drive their offspring toward my analytical office. When the stories have all been told, witnessed, remembered, something rather miraculous seems to happen. Between the remembering and the witnessing, compassion and forgiveness can be born. I have seen it. Many times. We forgive our trespassers as they forgive us. Humanity itself is redeemed in this narrow and holy space. How necessary this is to what follows.
I have attended many types of Easter Vigils. In chapels, in cathedrals, and alone in the woods. With youth groups, with friends, and alone, I have stayed up all night and greeted the glorious dawn. I once harvested forsythia boughs and pussy willows and tied them to the beams of a cross. I have watched Jesus Christ Superstar and Life of Brian. Many times. With choirs I have jumped to my feet for the rousing Hallelujah' Chorus’ of Handel’s Messiah. I have lit beeswax candles, hid Easter treats, and prepared a paschal lamb. I have read and reread the synoptic gospels account of the Passion of Christ. I have attended and created Maundy Thursday rituals, dipped into charoset, and I have fasted and I have feasted. Feasted with Jews, and Christians, and Muslims.
Tonight, as the quiet of post Easter descends, as the echoes of the stories linger, as I tap my humble words into the keyboard, I unexpectedly break into laughter. Laughter that gives way to tears. This is Joy. He is Risen. We are an Easter people. There is Good News to share. And what if this is the best medicine of all? For an ailing world, for broken bodies, for even the lost ones, and especially for the old ones, laughter and love can rise again. The tomb can become the womb. Again. I choose to roll back the stone from the pain, from the brokenness, from the nihilism. I choose to greet the dawn. I choose a full throated laugh. Everyday.