It’s Good Friday....Easter weekend.
But it may be difficult to spot it beyond the pandemic, the vaccine, the easing of restrictions and the chocolate eggs. Easter seems to me to have a strange feeling to it this year. During lockdown it is sometimes difficult to know what day it is. When Greenwich Mean Time changes to British summer Time I struggle to know what time it is. The wider pattern of the year seems blurred. The exploding blossoms and upright daffodils do help to keep me located in time somewhat but still I have rather lost track of time, even lost track of myself a little.
So what does all this talk of life and death, light and dark, hope and despair add up to? What does Easter mean nowadays? Is it anything more than a ritual to engrave on our minds the passage of the seasons? Some symbol of renewal of the cycle of life? A mere hangover from our Christian heritage? Or cynically, maybe now little more than another contrived marketing opportunity? An excuse to eat a lot of chocolate?
Is there any room for a sense of mystery in a time when Google will satisfy our every impulse of curiosity?
I think it means this:
Beyond all my attempts to reassure myself…
all the confident talk and posturing…
all the trumpeted achievements……
all the miles travelled…
all the securities assembled…
all the false self-deprecation…
There lingers the deep-down feeling:
‘I really don’t matter very much’.
I believe the Easter story: the trial, the betrayal, the anguish, the execution, the waiting, the coming to new life again mean something very simple but very profound:
‘You matter very much’...
... ✟his much
This anchors me in time and space. Whatever the season.
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