Resurrection Time

It is now post-Easter Sunday, and even though we continue to liturgically honor Eastertide for the next seven Sundays until Pentecost, our culture considers it "over". As I consider Easter, the meaning of resurrection and the deep and abiding need that we have for it, I am amazed that we are in such a hurry to celebrate and then forget it.

I am pondering death a lot lately - not the large and impending death that we all will know, and perhaps to some degree fear (at least the prospect of oblivion, of our lives being over and not having mattered, that sort of fear) - but the little deaths that we experience every day. Stephen Sondheim wrote a song for the play A Little Night Music that goes: "Every day a little death, in the parlor, in the bed, in the curtains, in the silver..." etc. and so on. Little deaths: of hope, of self-esteem, of dreams come true. And the more we invest in them, the less we are able to live in the good news of Jesus Christ, in the resurrection, in a life that is supported by a God of second chances.

I need the resurrection, new life, new beginnings - not just Jesus', but the knowledge that every day there's the opposite of a "little death", there's a little LIFE, there's hope, there's a reason to keep on keeping on. So this is where I'm going to focus in these days and weeks ahead. As I continue to enlarge my world-view, reading and writing about what's going on in my neighborhood and around the globe, I am also going to enlarge my resurrection view, my ability to see and perceive the new life and new possibilities around me.