(The Easter season continues...)
When we consider the first Easter, we realize that Easter joy
does not come like a cuddly bunny with brightly-colored eggs. Easter
dawns bright, but out of the darkness of injustice, political
oppression, torture, grief, and death. We might imagine, instead of
flowers bought at Home Depot, our Easter lilies blooming out of flame.
Forever after that day of days, the reality of Easter is present
whether or not we can perceive it, for it is intrinsic to our own lives
and inherent in all of creation. Like that first Easter, it may more
often than not be unnoticed, and it may be experienced, for now, in the
context of pain. But the Day of Resurrection bears with it the presence
of God who shares with us our own pain and sorrow, confounding common
stereotypes of how the divine should act, and showing us that this God
who is Mystery refuses to allow darkness to have the last word.
We are given hints of the presence of Christ risen—hints of that joy
which surpasses the horrors of news reports and the sorrows of our own
life. We are granted these hints, for example, in the longings that have
been implanted in our hearts, those longings which on the surface may
seem to indicate an absence: the longing for the More, the longing to
see the face of God, the longing for union with God.
We have hints of the reality of Easter in the glimpses we are granted
of goodness, of beauty, of love, of peace, indications of the Beyond
that is already and always in our midst.
"Early on the first day of the week, while it was still
dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been
removed from the tomb."
(John 20:1)
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“Lily Out of Flame” image by Rose Hoover, rc
Fractal flame created with Apophysis and edited with Photoshop