Easter Sunday

One thing I've learned from this year's Lenten practice of giving up take-out cups (a habit I will continue) and writing about it, is to simplify. In the process of simplifying, of giving up some pressures, I feel richer and more at peace. I've learned that even the humblest of intentional acts is worth meditating on. Today turned out to be one of the most restful and fulfilling Easters I've had for a long time. The highlight was holding my dear little granddaughter Willow for most of the afternoon, trying to lull her to sleep so her tired parents could play an involved board game with the rest of the company, and dozing off myself.

I got up early to bake three strawberry rhubarb pies, a traditional family spring favorite. 21-month-old Willow has discovered pie, not only to eat it, but to say it. "Pie, pie, pie." So the pies were in honor of her. Julia and I went to church early because David was going to perform a Sacred Harp Song, "Antioch," with the "Shouting Boys' Choir." He loves this sacred harp tune,"I know that my Redeemer liveth, Glory Hallelujah," and he loves singing it in his child's mezzo-soprano at the top of his lungs. At first I couldn't find him in the sanctuary (his South Bend friends were supposed to drop him off), but at last I discovered him on a back bench by himself. When he sang with the choir, Julia and I could hear his happy, confident voice rising through the others.

Bryan's parents, Bryan, Elizabeth & Willow were our guests at our Easter feast. It was too cold to hunt Easter eggs outside, but I hid them inside the house for David and Julia. I'd asked the kids exactly what they wanted at Easter and didn't do a bit more than that. David wanted to hunt eggs. Julia wanted only organic dark chocolate. Willow was far too sick with the flu to even want to hunt for eggs, but she loved the jelly beans with natural fruit flavors. After my lovely nap with Willow, during which everyone else washed the dishes, I discovered where I'd stashed all the colored, hollowed-out eggs we'd dyed and decorated last year, and made a table display for the cleared table.

And Bryan's mother offered each of the women in our family a folder she'd decorated with recycled pictures from calendars, inspirational sayings, collaged to create a pleasing harmony of texture, color, and image. She let us choose from a whole stack of them and we spent a long time admiring the designs and combinations she'd created.

A few days back I opened a book by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week, their historically based interpretation of Holy week. I didn't have time to read the whole book, which begins with the claim that Jesus's triumphant entry into Jerusalem was a political statement, a counter-procession to Pilate's Roman procession into the same city. But I read the final chapter on resurrection. Borg spends a lot of time showing how the Gospels each tell a different story of the resurrection, and it's even set in two different places. He discusses the appearances of Jesus to Mary Magdalen and to the disciples on the road to Emaus. Even when I was a child, these stories unsettled me. Even Mary, who saw Jesus in the garden outside the tomb after his resurrection, didn't recognize him. Borg calls the resurrection stories parables. Rather than struggle with whether or not they are literally true or verifiabl we should focus on what they mean.

To me, this year, they mean that the presence of those loved ones we have lost is still with us. We may not recognize them when they appear, because we cannot "see" them. And yet they are with us. And Christ is with us, too, in the ways in which we honor each other, in the invisible connections that bind us to each other. I didn't really understand this until I lost my parents. I didn't know until then how the love they had given me would live on, firmly rooted in my heart, each day. This, indeed is eternal life. Or at least as long as we hold it in our hearts, then pass it on to others in the perpetual rhythm of give and take.

My journey isn't finished. I'm still driving around with two or three boxes of sorted books designated for give-away to the library in the back of the car. I'll be working on the clutter, the sorting of the useful and the not-useful, for a long time to come. But by sharing the journey, I've grown more deeply aware that we're all on it together.