I actually love going to Church on Easter Sunday. I love responding to the minister’s proclamation “Christ is risen!” with a resounding “He is risen indeed!”
And it’s not because I am a firm believer in Christ or the Judeo Christian philosophies – it’s because these Easter themes of loss and re-birth and renewal are universal and because hope, more than any other emotion should be celebrated and its joy and promise shouted from the rooftops.
I think about this stuff every Easter – but there’s no better time to be thinking about redemption and renewal than when you’re waiting for a baby to be born. And that’s exactly what I am doing right now; waiting. My sister’s second child is due imminently and we’re all coaxing it out by our sheer will.
So what exactly, this Easter needs to be cast away? To be let go of? And what needs to be turned over into the soil of my life providing fertile ground for renewal?
That my friends, is the money question. In recent times, I’ve never felt as great an urge as I feel now to push away from the shore – to cast off just about all the vestments of my former life and begin again. How exciting that would be in many ways.
I think of my sister bringing on new life and envy her the opportunity she has to explore again the duality of parental life; the opportunity to at once be your self and fulfil your own desires and yet also invest so heavily in the “invention” of another. I watch my friends beginning new relationships or reinvigorating old ones and I envy them their opportunity to reinvent themselves by being seen through someone else’s eyes. I think of my young, idealistic friends in Honiara and envy them their life before them; uncharted and full of promise.
And I think I want all of this and none of it. I want it all because I want to embrace renewal and rebirth and the freedom of starting with a clean slate – and I want none of it because I want at once both freedom from my past and the opportunity to turn the sum of my experiences back into my soul-soil and to finally learn their lessons.
But these things really are at the heart of the Easter message. A clean slate is ours every day if we want it. We forgive and are forgiven, we learn, we move on. It’s the forgiveness that’s the key. Whether of ourselves or others.
In the Christian story of Easter, Christ’s family and followers rolled the stone away from his grave and found him gone. Before ascension could be known and celebrated, first there was grief and a great test of faith. For me, rolling the stone away this Easter means embracing what must first be lost to ever be found again. I have to forgive myself the thousand errors of judgement that have lead me down the path I find myself on and yet simultaneously celebrate and have faith in my choices.
It’s a long time since I’ve swung on monkey bars but I reckon Easter is a bit like that; the moment of greatest fear and exhilaration is the dark moment – hanging with one hand - right before something solid and known can be grasped. Just like the birthing process I am about to accompany my sister through. And writing that, she has just appeared to say her waters have broken… He is risen indeed!
