New Clothes for Easter

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb.

John 20

Christ is alive!

We arrive now at the tomb on Easter morning, 2020. What a strange and uncertain Holy Week this has been. Staying at home. Staying in place.

Are we also, in a sense, resurrecting in place?

If so, then a meme I saw yesterday seems particularly wisdom-sparking for me:

We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate and lack. We should not long to return, my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature.

Sonya Renee Taylor, Overgrow the System

If we are resurrecting in place, then we have a chance to change our place, our spaces of life and work, our communities, our cities and towns. We have a chance to stitch a new Easter garment, one we sew together with Christ’s life-threads of resurrection justice, grace, redemption, and hope.

Christ is alive.

And Christ calls to us in the gardens where we are living and working, urging us not to go back to normal but instead to do something different, to think different thoughts, to be motivated by different attitudes, to be clothed in love. Christ calls us to be resurrected into new life.

Ode to Resurrection

while it is still dark

we squint to see the path
to see anything

how are we to
recognize
believe in
hope for
crocus hallelujahs
when winter’s nomads
run wild through springtime’s
gentle
greenings

while it is still dark

it is no easy matter to see–
recognize
believe in
finding that not-yet-discovered
easter egg burrowed
deep in winter’s nest of
unremembered leaves

and yet–

“our time is not what defines the hour”

weary feet travel treacherous roads
tear-tired eyes peer into cavernous not-knowing
fearing death–
yearning for
irreverent light

while it is still dark

autumn’s summer remembrances
cultivate seeds in wintry graves
while all creation groans
toward spring

“our time is not what defines the hour”

so

while it is still dark

we keep on rising up
in the half-light
get dressed for the day’s work
and make our way
as best we can
seeking
hoping for
believing in
becoming
easter signs in
wilderness places