May We Rise from Our Sleep and Not Die an Unlived Life: An Easter Reflection

“A poem on Easter” by Wendell Berry

The little stream sings
in the crease of the hill.
It is the water of life. It knows
nothing of death, nothing.
And this is the morning
of Christ’s resurrection.
The tomb is empty. There is
no death. Death is our illusion,
our wish to belong only
to ourselves, which is our freedom
to kill one another.
From this sleep may we too
rise, as out of the dark grave.

from Wendell Berry’s Given: Poems

Today is Easter, let us rejoice and be glad; let us celebrate the joy that is this day whatever it may mean to us. For no matter the conditions of our lives, the state of our hearts. The lives of those dear to us and the struggles in this our shared world, the spirit of Easter can be born again and anew, in our hearts and lives. Life continues. Spring is here, the new life cannot be denied. Easter is here, let us rejoice and sing Hallelujah!!!


And what is Easter? Well it is different, perhaps unique for each and every one of us. What makes you want to rise up and sing Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah?

Easter is seen through many lenses, some are very clear and precise, they are certain of what Easter means, what Easter is about. Others though see Easter through a kaleidoscope of ever changing colours and shapes. What comes to your heart and mind when you think of Easter?

In my eyes it is a deeply universal festival, I see layers to this mythos, that if we allow it to can touch all of us. In order to be touched by the heart of Easter you do not have to believe in the actual bodily resurrection of Jesus, you can believe in Easter without having to accept that this actually happened. In fact perhaps it loses some of its power if we focus purely on this. Maybe actually if we view Easter through this very clear lens we will miss much of what it can teach us. Maybe it is better to view Easter through a kaleidoscope or at least partially clouded glass, maybe we see more through the mystery than the seeming clarity.

What is clear to me is that Easter is about the Power of Love that grew from that empty tomb. Whatever we may think about bodily resurrection, something definitely lived on beyond the physical death of Jesus. While his body may no longer have remained in the empty tomb, some beautiful aspect of his life certainly remained.

Easter for me is about being born to this life. Not being saved for the next life, or another life, but this life. Its about rejoicing in this gift we are given and living it to best of my ability. It is about that love in each of us being truly born. It’s about being saved to this life and not the next, whatever that may be.

To repeat Nathan C. Walker “Today’s question is not “What happens when we die?” it is “What happens when we stop living?” Let us live one day, this day”

Easter for me is not about some distant utopia but for we who live right here right now. It’s not so much hope for some heaven, or nirvana or even Oz in some place beyond our time and space, but about creating the commonwealth of love right here right now. Easter for me is about proclaiming that we each and every one of us have our part play in how the story unfolds, if we are just willing to wake up to all we can be, to find the courage to be all that we can be. All we have to do is listen, to pay attention to our world, to hear that still small voice, that sound that can be heard through silence and when we hear it call out our name to answer it and to bring that spirit of Easter into all that we are and we can be, to bring renewal and rebirth to life. This is our responsibility, our purpose, God will not do it for us, it is we who must build the New Jerusalem, right here, right now. God is with us, but will not do it for us.

To repeat Wendell Berry “The tomb is empty. There is no death. Death is our illusion,
our wish to belong only to ourselves, which is our freedom to kill one another. From this sleep may we too rise, as out of the dark grave.

Is this what resurrection truly is, to rise out of this dark grave, to finally live this life in love, to stop the harm, the hurt, the brutality, the killing.

Resurrection is love born from death, a love that transforms, that brings us to life, to new life perhaps. Hope born from despair, new hope, fresh hope, respair. Sometimes this is actual grief, born from literal loss. That deep aching hole, when we lose someone we love deeply. Such loss can break us. I am sure we have all felt such loss, some very recently. There are other deaths too, smaller deaths perhaps. The loss of a friendship, a job, a way of life, a marriage, a love, a physical or mental ability. The death of a long held dream. All these griefs are barren places in our lives, we feel we are losing our lives, places of sorrow, suffering and lamentation.

Yet from the empty tomb love is born again, from despair is born hope. Like waking on this first day of summer time. Eyes blinking as if for the first time. When downcast eyes are suddenly looking skyward in new Hope, fresh Hope “Respair”. Like those immortal words of e. e. cummings 'i thank You God for most this amazing day,', resurrection means “that they who have died are alive again in 'the gay, great happening illimitably earth.' Like a new spring day the earth is alive it is again illimitable. Isn’t this what resurrection meant 2,000 years ago and isn’t it what it means for we who live today. Let us all be alive again.

This is Easter

“Today’s question is not “What happens when we die?” it is “What happens when we stop living?” Let us live one day, this day” to once again paraphrase Nathan C. Walker

Let us live before we die, let us not live an lived life.

I remember hearing the following tale about Dawna Markova wrote a wonderful, moving and beautiful poem following the death of her father. I believe it illustrates precisely what is meant by resurrection by being born once again to this life, following a deep loss, the death of her father.

Dawna’s father had been a powerful CEO, a driven and successful man, who slowly slipped away, due to Alzheimer’s. As she visited him at the end of his life he was a shadow of the powerful figure he had been throughout his life. When Dawna was a child, her father never told her he loved her, believing in some weird way that it might weaken her. But that last day as she was leaving he finally told her, for the first and last time in her life, “I love you too, sweetheart.”

Dawna had struggled with her relationship with her father all her life. When she received the news that her father had died, something changed inside her, a new love was born in the tomb of her heart. That night the love she felt for him poured through her, turning into a torrent of tears. She wept herself to sleep that night, an outpouring of love. At three in the morning she awoke and felt moved to get up and write. Words flowed through her, almost as if they were a final message from her father. She wrote the following:

I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance,
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.

As I look at the blossom around me, as I watched the guys in the gardens planting seeds on Tuesday morning I thought of this poem and thought to myself how I hope to live my life so that whatever comes to me as seed goes to the next as blossom and that which comes to me as blossom goes on as fruit. For isn’t this transformation the message of love that was born again from those who fled the empty tomb that first Easter morning.

The message of Easter is the power of love coming back to life, transforming in new and wonderful ways. It can happen at any time in our lives. Easter implores us to live, to allow the renewal and resurrection of our souls, to risk living life alive, fully alive, to love abundantly. To risk our hearts in love. To take the seeds that are planted in us, water and nurture them until they blossom and can be handed to another. To take the gift of blossoms and warm them with the sunshine of our souls and the rain of our energy, until they bring forth fruit.

May we all rise from our sleep and not die an unlived life.

Happy Easter, Alleluis, Alleluia.

Amen.

Below is a video devotion based on the material in this "blogspot"

Something Beautiful Remains: An Easter Reflection

“Rebirth” by Elizabeth Tarbox

"When the day is too bright or the night too dark, and your feelings are like an avalanche barrelling down the mountain of events outside your control, when you look down and you are falling and you cannot see the bottom, or when your pain has eaten you and you are nothing but an empty hungry hole, then there is an opportunity for giving.

Don't stay home and cover your head with a pillow. Go outside and plant a tulip bulb in the ground; that is an act of rebirth. Sprinkle breadcrumbs for the squirrels or sunflower seeds for the birds; that is a claiming of life. And when you have done that, or if you cannot do that, go stare at a tree whose leaves are letting go for its very survival. Pick up a leaf, stare at it; it is life; it has something to teach you.

You are as precious as the birds or the tulips or the tree whose crenellated bark protects the insects who seek its shelter. You are an amazing, complex being with poetry in your arteries and charity layered beneath your skin. You have before you a day full of opportunities for living and giving. Do not think you know all there is to know about yourself, for you have not given enough away yet to be able to claim self knowledge. Do you have work to do today? Then do it as if your life were hanging in the balance, do it as fiercely as if it mattered, for it does. Do you think the world doesn't need you? Think again! You cleanse the world with your breathing, you beautify the world with your thinking and acting and caring.

Don't stay home and suffocate on your sorrow; go outside and give yourself to the world's asking."

Elizabeth Tarbox

We all know suffering...We all know moments when all hope has seemingly gone...And yet from this place of emptiness, nothingness, knew hope can rise again...There need not be despair if we turn again in faith and return to love and life...This is the meaning of Easter for me...

Easter begins with the empty tomb; Easter begins with despair and fear; Easter begins with a sense of emptiness of nothingness. In the account in Mark’s Gospel when the women go to the tomb and find it empty they flee in terror and say nothing. The real miracle is in what follows, the power of love that comes to life from nothingness, from the emptiness.

This is something we can all surely relate to at one time or another this sense of losing everything, of everything being lost. This to me is the essence of the whole Easter Mythos that love can once again grow from the nothingness, from the emptiness. That abundant love can once again grow in our own hearts and our own spirits and that we can incarnate this in our own lives. That this love can be poured out onto our world that so desperately needs it, as much today as when they found the tomb empty some two thousand years ago.

This is our task I believe, our religious task, to once again bring the love that was so evidently present in the life of Jesus alive once again in our oh so human flesh. We can do it, we do not have to be afraid, we do not need to flee in fear, we just need courage gentle courage and this will sustain us. We just need to fill the empty tomb with that abundant love that is present in all life, fill it to overflowing and then let it pour out in all of life…

In all that we feel, all that we think, all that we say and all that we do...

“Easter Day” by George Landor Perin

"There is perhaps no day in all the year so full of meaning to the sensitive soul as the Easter Day. To say nothing of the beautiful music and flowers with which it is honoured, it is to multitudes the anniversary of new life by which they were borne to higher and nobler hopes. The peal of Easter bells and the melody of the Easter songs are the signals for a throng of memories and a host of suggestions to every heart. The origin of the day is simple enough. It is the anniversary of the Master’s resurrection. But what are its deeper meanings, its profound suggestions? I know not how it may be with you, but for myself they are embodied in such phrases as theses: “Victory from the ashes of defeat;” “Hope born from the soil of despair;” “Immortality crowning the grave.” The resurrection of Jesus means all this and more."

by George Landor Perin

Easter is seen through many lenses, some are very clear and precise, they are certain as to what Easter is about. Others amongst us though seem to see Easter through a kaleidoscope of ever changing colours and shapes. What comes to your heart and mind when you think of Easter?

Easter is a deeply universal festival in my eyes, I think there are so many layers to this mythos, that if we allow it to can touch all of us. In order to be touched by the magic of Easter you do not have to believe in the actual bodily resurrection of Jesus, you can believe in Easter without having to accept that this actually happened. In fact perhaps it loses some of its power if we focus purely on this. Maybe actually if we view Easter through this very clear lense we will miss much of what it can teach us. Maybe it is better to view Easter through a kaleidoscope or at least partially clouded glass, maybe we see more through the mystery than the seeming clarity.

What is clear to me is that Easter is about the Power of Love that grew from that empty tomb. Whatever we may think about bodily resurrection, something definitely lived on beyond the physical death of Jesus. While his body may no longer have remained in the empty tomb, some beautiful aspect of his life certainly remained.

I believe it is the same with every life and the love that life leaves behind, something beautiful always remains.

This brings to mind those beautiful words often shared at funerals by that famous author “Unknown”

“Something Beautiful Remains” – Unknown

The tide recedes but leaves behind
bright seashells on the sand.
The sun goes down, but gentle
warmth still lingers on the land.
The music stops, and yet it echoes
on in sweet refrains.....
For every joy that passes,
something beautiful remains.

Every life leaves its mark. Every life impacts in some way. We should never think that we are insignificant, that we do not matter. We impact on everyone and everything around us. Everything that we do and everything that do not do matters. There are those who I have known and who have loved me, who have been gone many years, who are still impacting on my life. Of their lives, something beautiful remains.

Easter is a reminder to me that even after death something beautiful remains. It is an acknowledgement of life’s sacredness. It is a reaffirmation of life that not even death cannot end. Easter for me is about birth and re-birth, again and again and again…

All around us life is being reborn. I see this clearly as I walk down and around Dunham Massey each morning. The spring flowers are everywhere, the birds are singing more sweetly and the deer, the beautiful deer, are increasingly going about their deer like business. I have noticed the young bucks squaring up to one and trying out their growing antlers either against tree branches or fencing with one another. It is a beautiful sight of life coming alive and it fills my heart to overflowing with a love for life itself and helps me connect to my true inner being, to all life and to that Greater reality that gives birth to and connects all life. There is something about the essence of Easter in all of this.

In each of us is written the essence and the spirit of Easter. In each of us is written to capacity to resurrect the Love that was at the core of the life of Jesus. We can bring that love alive once again. We can incarnate that love again. That love can seemingly die in the winters of our lives and come to life once again in our spring times, regardless of the time of year. It is we who can bring this love alive once again. We can become at one with that ancient tale. We can become the resurrection and the life. In so doing we will ensure that something beautiful will remain from our simple, humble, oh so human lives.

Easter begins with the death and loss of the life of Jesus, with the seeming end of his life’s promise. Every single death seemingly means just the same. It begins with the despair of the empty tomb and the despair and terror of this very emptiness. This though is not where it ends, something else happened, something grew from this emptiness, this hopelessness, this despair. Something beautiful remained. Something new was born again. This despair was transformed into a new Hope. The death of Jesus, for those who followed him, was not the end it was actually the beginning, a new beginning.

This very same possibility of transformation and renewal exists for all of us. We see examples of this all around us. Not just in nature and the earth’s renewal but in the lives of ordinary folk too. People who have experienced utter despair, have lost everything precious to them and yet have transformed this into a loving new Hope. Yes they have known utter despair, but this despair has been born again in a new Hope. Resurrection is not some mysterious event from 2,000 years ago, but a promise to each and every one of us; Resurrection is a promise and a challenge for us all that represents the possibility of transformation for everyone and a real sense of a new Hope.

Even after death, something beautiful remains. If we live lives of love and beauty. If we become all that we were born to be if we bring to life from the empty tombs of our own lives the love that is at the heart of the Easter Mythos. A love that is eternal, a love that never dies, a love that I believe is our task to bring alive.

...May we become the blessings our world needs...Not just this morning, but in every morning to come...

These are thoughts of mine about Easter, a universal festival for all people at all times. This is what it means to me, but what does it mean to you. I ask you once again what comes to your heart and mind when you think of Easter?

"Something Beautiful Remains" 

An Easter Reflection: New Beginnings

"Out of the depths of the experience of death and despair comes resurrection – unexpected, but possible, Easter is the power of inner rebirth that breaks the powers that hold us in bondage. It is the eternal “yes” that shatters every “no.”

Out of the experience of slavery and persecution comes release, new freedom – unexpected, though longed for. Passover celebrates the reality of the New Day of justice, peace, and hope that has lived for centuries in the heart of humanity.

Out of the dreary days of winter comes spring – expected, but not without surprise. Easter marks the power of life’s renewal built into the cycle of birth and growth and death on this our blue planet Earth.

May the spirit of rebirth, of freedom, of release, be with you all this season."

“Easter” by Frederick Gillis

The spirit of Easter is universal; it portrays a truth that can speak to all people in every culture at every time and in every place. It points to those moments in all our lives when something deeper within us, at the core of our being, within the marrow of our bones, that mystery that is the essence that we call soul is called out, is called forth, called to a deeper understanding of life right here, right now, in our world.

Easter is the season of re-birth and renewal. The days are becoming brighter, today officially marks the beginning of British summer time. The seasons are turning, new life is all around us, bursting into existence. Easter raises the question, what will this season this time of re-birth bring forth in us. What has been waiting to come to life within ourselves? What has been forming in this long, cold, dark winter? It seems to have been a particularly long winter this year.

We can be a troubled lot at times. Looking at our world it is easy to lose hope and to get lost in the negativity that is present in life, to become trapped in despair. We have all wandered through our long winters of discontent, we can look at our world and turn away at times from the pain and cruelty we see; we can look at our own lives and think of the pain and cruelty that has been inflicted on us, or that we ourselves have inflicted on others; we can think of the many opportunities we have missed. This can easily force us back into winters hibernation to turn away with indifference from life and love. This though is not all that life is if we look honestly at our own lives and our world we will also see so much light and goodness, freedom and courage and just plain old fashioned decency. Every day when I look at the world outside my window I see so much of this love in the ordinary lives of the ordinary people I share this spinning planet with, I should never allow the beauty of the forest to become obscured by the ugliness of some of its trees.

Easter for me is not about some distant utopia but for we who live right here right now. It’s not so much about hope for some heaven, or nirvana or even Oz in some place beyond our time and space, but about creating the commonwealth of love right here right now. Easter for me is about proclaiming that each and every one of us have our part to play in how the story unfolds, if we are just willing to wake up to all we can be, to find the courage to be all that we can be. All we have to do is listen, to pay attention to our world, to hear that still small voice and when we hear it call out our name to answer it and to bring that spirit of Easter into all that we are and we can be, to bring renewal and rebirth to life. This is our responsibility, our purpose, God will not do it for us, it is we who must build the New Jerusalem, right here, right now. God is with us, but will not do it for us.

“In Praise of Spring” by Dawn Goodrich

What courage pure with which we start

to gather fragments, bits, and parts,

with mindless grace that works and plays

and marks the seasons passing days.

What cause in us to celebrate,

With calendar and special dates,

As we may try to comprehend

Where seasons start, where seasons end?

What humanness to fix a date

And offer praise as if to bait

The inner growth we long to reach

That roots prepare and flowers teach.

What lesson wise on season’s part

To pinch the mind but squeeze the heart

While pelting us with memories

Of icy earth and naked trees?

What gift the bud, the growth, the flowers

That creep in spring and burst in power,

That cast our eyes in modest shame

And longing lust to do the same?

What flower’s strength as if on cue

Forgotten dreams that we once knew,

As winter wishes wake to sing

And feed the soul in praise of spring?

Spring is here, I know that the weather keeps on arguing against this, but it is here. My senses are alive with rebirth, especially my ears. Those birds that I hear from outside my window keep on singing their souls out, they know even if we doubt it from time to time, that we are now in the season of re-birth. Yes spring is springing into life once again. Life is singing out its re-birth.

The longer I’ve lived in my little cottage at Sylvan Grove the more those birds have come to mean to me. They are a constant in my life; they seem to sing regardless of the time of year and whether I want them to or not. Ok some days their songs are louder and perhaps the tune changes with the season, but every morning they sing. And as that little gift that was left on my doorstep the other week read “A bird does not sing because it has an answer; it sings because it has a song”. I’ve been thinking about these words for a few weeks now. What do I need the most an answer or a song to sing? I think I know the answer as anyone who knows me knows the answer, “How can I keep from singing?”

One of my favourite hymns is “A Melody of Love” I particularly love the opening verse “God speaks to us in bird and song, in winds that drift the clouds along, above the din of toil and wrong, a melody of Love.” God speaks to me through life itself, this is why it is so vital for me to stay awake to all of life.

Brings to mind Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” “Part 48” and those immortal words:

“ Why should I wish to see God better than this day? I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then, In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass, I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign'd by God's name, And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe'er I go, Others will punctually come for ever and ever.”

I see or do I mean I hear God in those birds that sing outside my window. They have kept on singing even in the coldest darkest winter. They have also become my spiritual barometer. They tell me so much about my own spiritual condition. Some days I don’t seem to be able to hear them as they sing or at least I have to strain to hear. I have noticed those are the days when I have somehow got lost in my troubles and have lost that vital connection to life and to God. Thankfully this rarely last long these days and I soon find myself back in harmony. I often wonder what other people’s spiritual barometers are, I wonder what yours are.

The day of the new beginning is now with us, I wonder what is yet to come? What life has to offer us and perhaps more importantly what we have to offer to life? At the start of Lent I said I was going to focus on what I could give to life instead of what I thought I should give up. Just because Easter has now come, I do not intend to give this up, I will continue. Life gives so much to me, when I have my senses fully awakened, when the ears of my ears are awake and the eyes of my eyes are opened. Therefore it seems only fare that I should continue giving as much as I can back to life. To keep on planting those seeds of hope and love, to leave my own love letters from God wherever I go and whatever I do. If I do I know that I will continue to receive abundantly, my whole life through.

I will end this little chip of a blog with some word by John O'Donohue

For a New Beginning

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life's desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

~ John O'Donohue ~