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Posts from the ‘Easter’ Category

Apr 1

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The Case for Hope

“The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.”― Nicolas Chamfort

“The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.”― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

When cynicism, criticism and incivility grow loud and try to rule.
Do not partake.
Do not succumb.
We fight the good fight for those who come after.
Planting trees we’ll never see.
Five energetic, bright-eyed happy boys, overflowing with joy and laughter.
The case for hope.
Children on Easter Sunday morning.
The reason to keep planting.
Fight the good fight of optimism, joy, hope, peace, laughter, light and love.
Bountiful and beautiful harvest.

“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.”― Emily Dickinson

Mar 31

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Third Day

“When we pray for guidance, perhaps God’s answer is every way he hems us in, like a river.”― Christie Purifoy, Placemaker: Cultivating Places of Comfort, Beauty, and Peace

EASTER BLESSING

“On this Easter morning, let us look again at the lives we have been so generously given and let us let fall away the useless baggage that we carry — old pains, old habits, old ways of seeing and feeling — and let us have the courage to begin again. Life is very short, and we are no sooner here than it is time to depart again, and we should use to the full the time that we still have.

We don’t realize all the good we can do. A kind, encouraging word or helping hand can bring many a person through dark valleys in their lives. We weren’t put here to make money or to acquire status or reputation. We were sent here to search for the light of Easter in our hearts, and when we find it we are meant to give it away generously. The dawn that is rising this Easter morning is a gift to our hearts and we are meant to celebrate it and to carry away from this holy, ancient place the gifts of healing and light and the courage of a new beginning.” – John O’Donohue, Dawn Mass Reflections at Corcomroe Abbey

Death to life.
Redemption.
Resurrection.
The third day.
Hallelujah.
Called to be Easter people.
Joy. Hope. Light. Triumph.
Not a day, a way to live.

“The sorrow of Good Friday’s sacrifice to the joy of Easter’s dawn of victory is a timeless testament to life’s journey from despair to hope, from darkness to light, from trial to triumph.”― Aloo Denish Obiero

Apr 17

Eastertide

“The day the Lord created hope was probably the same day he created spring.”— Bernard Williams

“The very first Easter taught us this: that life never ends and love never dies.” – Kate McGahan

Easter is the culmination and completion of the Lenten season and the beginning of Eastertide, the seven Sundays following referred to the “Season of the Spirit.” Beginnings and endings and all that resides in between, where we live daily, often looking backward and forward, missing the extraordinary in ordinary days.

The transition from winter to spring, with winter windchills returning yesterday to remind us that she’s not done yet. Transition and transformation are not done in one day but in a series of days held together, in seasons. The cusp of ending falling into beginning. Again and again.

Thresholds, waiting, hoping, dawn, resurrection. May you remain present and senses ablaze through each day of each season, passing through the doors to newness of life.

“Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul.”— Victor Hugo

Apr 10

Carry Easter Forward

“Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime.” – Martin Luther

“Here is the amazing thing about Easter; the Resurrection Sunday for Christians is this, that Christ in the dying moments on the cross gives us the greatest illustration of forgiveness possible.” – T. D. Jakes

The Lenten journey is complete.
Culminating in Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday.
Completed on Easter Sunday.
The third day.
On the fourth day, Monday, we are called to be Easter people.
And to continue on Tuesday, Wednesday…and each day before us.
As Father Malone advised at Sunday Easter mass, “leave the bandages.”
Jesus resurrected, left the burial dressing, the bandages behind in the empty tomb.
Calling us each to leave our bandages behind to become Easter people.
Our bandages of hurt, pain, offenses-both given and received, anger, unforgiveness, wounds, remorse, resentment, the past.
Put it all down.
Carry Easter forward.
Resurrection requires us to leave the old to become fully new.
May you accept the daily invitation to a peace that passes understanding, a hope unending, and love without limits.

“We must restore hope to young people, help the old, be open to the future, spread love. Be poor among the poor. We need to include the excluded and preach peace.” – Pope Francis

Apr 9

About Love, Real Love

“A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.”― Pope John Paul II (Karol Wojtyła)

Easter morning.
New life.
About love beyond comprehension.
No boundaries, walls, only windows open wide.
A love without condition, denial, unforgiveness, resentment, demands, boasting, anger, fear.
Redemption.
Forgiveness.
Spring.
Resurrection.
Unfamiliar, unbelievable, incomprehensible.
Yet offered to each and all, no exceptions, exclusions, no small print rules and regulations.
Say “Yes!” to this offer of love.
Be renewed and freed from chains of the past and fear of the future.
Today, the tomb is empty.
Love, pure love is risen.
Happy, happy Easter.

“God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.” – Saint Augustine

Apr 7

Bear the Weight and the Wait

“How great is the love of God! He loved me long before I knew His name. He wooed me, chased me, enthralled me, and captured my heart. He didn’t prove His love at a candlelight dinner. There were no long-stemmed roses, but there were thorns. Yes, there were thorns.” – Katherine J. Walden

“Good Friday is not about us trying to “get right with God.” It is about us entering the difference between God and humanity and just touching it for a moment. Touching the shimmering sadness of humanity’s insistence that we can be our own gods, that we can be pure and all-powerful.” – Nadia Bolz-Weber

Enter fully into the heaviness of this day, Good Friday.
What is Good about this?
Carry a sliver of the Cross.
Jesus bearing all but your sliver.
On the edge, flounder, a thread of hope.
Held in grace and love.
Remember and remain.
For when Sunday comes.
The third day.
Redemption. Resurrection. Easter.
It means nothing without the angst of Good Friday, the weight.
The hollowness and exhaustion of Holy Saturday, the wait.
Sunday comes, but not without Friday and Saturday.
Sacred, holy ground.
Preparing us for transformation to Easter people.
The gift of spring.
Hope fulfilled.
It is and will be done.

“We focus on Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday, but we forget to pause in the stillness of the days between. Find time today to be present in that place of waiting. There is treasure to be found in the sacred peace that comes as you breathe in that place of quiet surrender. Don’t rush through the space called “Between.” – Katherine J. Walden

Mar 26

Mini-Easter

“You are one body and one spirit, just as God also called you in one hope. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father of all, who is over all, through all, and in all.”-Ephesians 4:4-6

This year, Kate Bowler offered another free Lenten reflection guide that aligned with the release of her new book, The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days.

Each day a new reflection to consider, focus and ponder. Sundays are “Mini-Easters” where “we take a break from any sad, heavy feelings for a respite to do something that makes you feel buoyed by gladness.” So here goes…

Today is my great nephew’s Elijah’s baptism.
A celebration and welcoming.
An invitation to all to be baptized again.
Dipped in the waters.
Renewed and made new daily.
This is his day and ours by witnessing and accepting the invitation to a peace that passes understanding, a joy everlasting and hope that ties it all together.
So Happy Mini-Easter and Happy Baptism to Elijah and to all who are called to be instruments of peace.
Easter two weeks away.
14 days left of our 40 day journey.
Keep going.
Birth, life, resurrection.
Baptism again.

“Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.” Amen.
— St. Francis of Assisi

Mar 10

A Beautiful Mess

“Joy is a mystery because it can happen anywhere, anytime, even under the most unpromising circumstances, even in the midst of suffering, with tears in its eyes.”—Frederick Buechner, The Hungering Dark

“Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.”― Henri J.M. Nouwen

We reduce.
Summarize.
Bucket.
Simplify.
Order.
Judge.
Assume.
Other.
Distill.
Life is richer, more complicated, and complex than a bumper sticker, a platitude, a paragraph, a snapshot.
Allow, invite and embrace the mystery, unknowing, intricacies, story, nuance, shadows, shapes and always light, always hope, always resurrection.
A beautiful mess, joy woven through all of it.
Always resurrection.
Easter and spring at the end of the story, with glimpses on each page.

“Oh, there are so many lives. How we wish we could live them concurrently instead of one by one by one. We could select the best pieces of each, stringing them together like a strand of pearls. But that’s not how it works. A human life is a beautiful mess.”― Gabrielle Zevin, Elsewhere

Feb 22

This Journey

“The resurrection tells us it is never too late. Every so often we will be surprised. We must believe that the stone will be rolled back, and we must be ready to poke out our timid heads, take off the linen bindings of death, and walk free for a time, breathing resurrection air.”― Ronald Rolheiser, Prayer: Our Deepest Longing

“Just when we were beginning to enjoy the play, the stagehands came out and dismantled the manger. From its wood, they built a cross. What kind of a drama is this anyway?”— Ann Weems, Kneeling in Jerusalem

40 days.
Desert time.
It feels like the past three years have been a chronic desert.
This one is different.
This one completes, finishes, transforms.
From temporal to eternal.
Journey to reflection, forgiveness, wholeness.
Grace, clarity, light.
Take up rather than give up.
Keep going through.
No short cuts or bypasses.
Winter to spring.
Breathing resurrection air.
In due time.
Take this journey.
From Bethlehem to Jerusalem.

“Ash Wednesday and we are on our way to Your Way. O Lamb of God, have mercy upon us and keep us from all the smallness of our lives that would take precedence over kneeling in Jerusalem.”— Ann Weems, Kneeling in Jerusalem

Apr 18

40, 3, 50, 1

“That is one good thing about this world, there are always sure to be more springs.”- L.M Montgomery

“The Easter egg symbolizes our ability to break out of the hardened, protective shell we’ve surrounded ourselves with.”- Siobhan Shaw

40 days of Lent;
3 days of Cross to Resurrection;
50 days of Eastertide;
1 day at a time to remain present, aware and awake in;
In all seasons, on each journey, growth, change and bloom if we allow, if we do not resist;
Enter this season of renewal, of spring, of newness and let it do its work in you.

“The story of Easter is the story of God’s wonderful window of divine surprise.” — Carl Knudsen

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