I want to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.
― Mary Oliver
- Music video: Easter Song (with Keith’s witness) or Easter Song (no speaking/witnessing) by Keith Green (Christian)
- Music video: Here Comes the Sun by the Beatles (rock)
- Music video: Empty Grave by Zach Williams (Christian)
Here Comes the Sun
— The Beatles lyrics by George Harrison
Here comes the sun (doo doo doo doo)
Here comes the sun, and I say
It’s all right
Little darling, it’s been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here
Here comes the sun
Here comes the sun, and I say
It’s all right
It’s all right
It’s all right
Manifesto: Mad Farmer Liberation Front (excerpt)— Wendell Berry
… Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
EASTER BLESSING — John O’Donohue
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.
Easter Meditations
Hello, sun in my face.
Hello you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields…
Watch, now,
how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.
― Mary Oliver
No mud, no lotus. — Thich Nhat Hanh
Our lives, if we are to be saved, must stand as a testament to that legacy which, beyond our doing, is inescapable. Cowardice and complicity must die in us. And we must rise again to “love” a new world into existence. — Eddie S. Glaude What has always been basic to Easter, or resurrection, is crucifixion. If you want resurrection, you must have crucifixion. Too many interpretations of the Crucifixion have failed to emphasize that relationship and emphasize instead the calamity of the event. If you emphasize the calamity, you look for someone to blame… But crucifixion is not a calamity if it leads to new life. Through Christ’s crucifixion we were unshelled, which enabled us to be born to resurrection. That is not a calamity. So, we must take a fresh look at this event if its symbolism is to be sensed. — Joseph Campbell
Let go. Let it die. And be reborn.— Jim Lockard
It happens to all of us. God simply keeps reaching down into the dirt of humanity and resurrecting us from the graves we dig for ourselves through our violence, our lies, our selfishness, our arrogance, and our addictions. And God keeps loving us back to life over and over. ― Nadia Bolz-Weber
Blossom by blossom the spring begins. — Algernon Charles Swinburne
Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song. — Pope John Paul II
On Easter Day the veil between time and eternity thins to gossamer. — Douglas Horton
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
A rebirth out of spiritual adversity causes us to become new creatures. — James Faust
Easter is a time when God turned the inevitability of death into the invincibility of life. — Craig D. Lounsbrough
Every time Jesus rises in our own hearts in new ways, the Resurrection happens again. Every time we see Jesus where we did not recognize him before — in the faces of the poor, in the love of the unloved, in the revelatory moments of life, Jesus rises anew. The real proof of the Resurrection lies not in the transformation of Jesus alone but in the transformation awaiting us who accept it. To say, ‘I believe in Jesus Christ . . . who rose from the dead,’ is to say something about myself at the same time. It says that I myself am ready to be transformed. Once the Christ-life rises in me, I rise to new life as well. — Joan Chittister
Resurrection Isn’t Reversal (excerpt) — Nadia Bolz-Weber
So, I have some Easter-related questions, God. I’m wondering – that one dawn, so many years ago, when Jesus came out of his own tomb, did he step haltingly toward the light or did he run? Did he know who he was right away, or did that take a minute? Did he harbor resentments about his faltering friends or was he free?
… My Easter request is this: Help us remember that resurrection isn’t reversal, that as we return to life, we are carrying our own wounds from loss and isolation. But we are also emerging with new beauty and new wisdom. We are not who we were. But we do get to discover who we are. Help us not foreclose on each other. Maybe just grant us a holy curiosity for a while?
Please give me courage to trust the hope I feel right now. Save me from squandering this moment of new life. Remind me that all the fear and cynicism in the world never protects me from pain and disappointment in the way I think they will. Give us back to each other when the time is right. May we recognize you, our wounded and resurrected God, in our belly laughs and crocodile tears…and maybe … even in each other. Amen.
Questions that Easter Answers (excerpts) — Dr Martin Luther King
I’m here to tell you this morning that you don’t see me. You look here, and you see my body. You see my external being. You see something that’s merely a manifestation of something else. But the real me, you can never see. You can never see that something that the psychologists call my personality. You can never see my mind. You can never see my ideas. You can only see my body, and my body can’t think. My body can’t reason. My body only moves at the dictates of my mind. And so this morning, Easter tells us that everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see. The visible is a shadow cast by the invisible. Easter cries out to us that the idealists are right, that it is ultimately mind, personality, spiritual forces that are eternal and not merely these material things that we look about and see.
… That’s what Easter says to us, that the forces of darkness, the forces of evil, the forces of justice must finally come to the light and must finally come to the forefront. And the forces of darkness and evil must finally pass away.
… This is the Easter message, this is the question that it answers. It says to us that love is the most durable power in the world. — Martin Luther King
Come to the Easter Party — Ann Weems
I think on Easter morning we should throw confetti in church!
No?
What about a little fanfare?
A deafening drum roll?
A three-minute standing ovation?
What? Have we had the drums beaten out of us
That we in the celebrative community can’t really
Get excited about God’s aliveness?
About God’s love given to us unconditionally?
Have we given Easter to the lily bearers, the bunny rabbits,
the patent leather shoes?
Let’s face it: we live as though we don’t believe in Easter . . .
Easter scares us
Because we’re the people who can’t believe
That God gives us abundant Life;
We think we have to earn it.
In our pull-yourself-up by-your-own-bootstraps society
It’s hard to remember that God doesn’t buy the self-made man.
So we in the church spend our lives showing God
What good people we are,
What achievers we are,
How much we deserve God’s love.
We want to pay our own way,
But Easter says it’s already been paid!
Easter says, no matter how prodigal,
We can go home again!
So come to the Easter party!
Let’s celebrate that amazing grace
That in Christ’s resurrection
We are still loved even at our most outrageous.
The Lord has given us the music;
All we need do is dance it!
Come to the Easter party!