Easter-ing ~ Week Three?!?

 

Painting by Brenda Robinson

Easter Meditation for this week

Wait…you may think, “Why are we still talking about Easter?”  After all, the lilies are long gone from the sanctuary and the stores have clearance out all the chocolate bunnies for another year.  We have moved on to May, a new month, so time for a new theme.  Right?  Actually, the season of Easter lasts fifty days ~ ten days longer than the season of Lent.  Hold that for a moment.  Often we see Lent as a somber and serious time; a prayerful time; a time set aside to focus our intention and attention on places where we need healing and help.  To counterbalance this, Easter arrives not just for a day or a few weeks, but for day-after-day, longer than the season of lent.  During these weeks you can:

 

Practice resurrection ~ paying attention to places of new life, new beginnings, new rustling within you;

Cultivate joy ~ this is that space within your soul that is an anchor in the currents of life.  Yes, my heart breaks at the news each night AND I trust God is not finished yet.  God’s character and creativity is to bring life from death.

Touch Creation ~ Resurrection is not only for humans but all creation.  God so loves the world, says John 3:16.  Moreover, many psychologists suggest that being in nature nurtures us in healing ways.

Notice and name gratitude ~ we need to see the promise and possibility of life, not only the pain in life.  Negativity in our world is like Velcro, it sticks and stays with us.  We can ruminate and let hurt live rent free in your mind.  Too often we are quick to discount, even evict, the moments of peace and joy for staying in our lives.

Keep praying the sentence I offered on Easter, “I have seen the Lord…”  You may see the Lord in the face of friends or a stranger who helps you in the store.  You may see the Lord in vivid, vibrant colors as you take a walk.  You may see the Lord in moments of quiet or laughter or reading or painting. 

 

Seeing the Lord is not just something you need to wait passively for God to arrive.  One the one hand, God comes disguised as our ordinary, everyday lives.  God arrives unexpected, in serendipitous ways.  On the other hand, you can cultivate practices that create space for God.  What if before you go into the meeting today you think, “I will stay open to seeing the Lord”.  Or before you go to a lunch date.  Or before you take a walk outside.  Or before you call someone.  Pausing for a moment before joining the Zoom or walking into an event reminding yourself that God is already there!! 

 

To be sure, this isn’t some magical formula that will offer a money back guarantee.  The meeting might go off the rails and people could hide knives in their sarcastic words.  And also in that meeting someone may do something to lower the temperature in the room or you might try to let the Easter-ing light of God shine through you.  To see the Lord starts to be a metamorphosis within us that takes time.  Which is why, perhaps, our earliest Christian ancestors designated the season of Easter to be longer than Lent.  If we spend 40 days being serious, perhaps we can look at these 50 days of Easter in a lighter way.  If we hold Lent as a somber season, Easter is the playful reminder that prayer is both. 

 

May these fifty days of Easter find you steeped in the sacred and surrounded by a holy love that continues to meet us in the wounds and wants ~ but doesn’t leave you in the darkness of the tomb ~ rather guides you to the new life and light of God’s, “Yes” to love.  Alleluia and Amen.