7th Sunday of Easter Year A

7th Sunday of Easter May 24, 2020 When Mary Margaret was a preschooler, she hated taking naps. She would fight and resist until finally, I said, “Ok, you don’t have to take a nap, but you do have to stay in your room and be quiet for a certain amount of time.” This plan started off great, until a little bit of time passed, and MM called out, “Is it time yet?” “Not yet!” I replied patiently the first time and then with gradually decreasing patience every time after. “Is it time yet?” “Not yet!” until I finally just gave up and let her out. It started the dame way the next day and the day after that until I did what desperate mother’s do when they have the option: I called my mamma, and of course, she knew what to do. I told MM that I was going to put a timer in the hallway outside her bedroom door, and so when the timer went off, she would know it was time to come out. (This plan had an added benefit, which I recently confessed to MM, which allowed me to creep quietly outside her door and add time to the timer because I knew either she needed more quiet time or I did.) “Is it time yet?” the disciples ask the risen Christ. “Is it time for you to restore the kingdom of Israel?” Jesus tells them that it is not for them to know the times that God has set, but they can know that they will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon them, and they will be his witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. As Jesus is telling them this, he ascends to heaven, and his disciples are all left there, probably with their mouths hanging open and starting up after him. And as they are standing and staring, suddenly two men in white robes appear and tell them “It’s not time yet. He’ll come back, but it’s not time yet.” So the disciples return to the room where they are staying, and they stay there and pray together. The 7th Sunday of Easter is always a strange, in-between sort of time in the liturgical year—an already but not yet kind of time. This past Thursday, we celebrated the Feast of the Ascension and next Sunday, we celebrated the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. We know the spirit is coming because Jesus has promised this gift, but it’s not time yet. “Is it time yet?” our ecumenical partners have begun asking our bishop-elect. “Is it time yet?” our bishop-elect wonders what the clergy think. “Is it time yet?” we clergy ask each other. “Is it time yet?” some of you are asking. Two weeks ago our vestry had an important conversation, but we weren’t even trying to answer the question, “Is it time yet?” But rather we were reflecting on the question, “What will we need to do when it is time?” What will church need to look like when it is time?” What will we need to do to try our best and hardest to keep everyone safe? As we talked through the options, it became clear to us that when it is finally time, much of what we have known and loved about doing church together will have to look different—no nursery or choral singing; probably no coffee hour; all wearing masks when entering and leaving; no touching or hugging and staying 6 feet apart (which may have to include ushers telling you where to sit), and there were so many other creative and responsible questions asked by your vestry. Quickly the conversation moved from beyond “Is it time yet?” and “what will we need to do when it is time?” to questions such as “Can we engage with each other more and more meaningfully the way we are doing church now than what in person would have to look like, fell like, be like? And then they started thinking about the most vulnerable ones of you, how you would feel if some of us came back before you felt it was safe, ,and how we would feel if you came back before we knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it was safe. It’s not time yet. Even though the Catholics are starting back to in person worship; even though our President is saying it is necessary, we know it is not time yet because we trust the promise of our Lord that he is with us, even now, in what we do—in continuing to be the church even when we are not together in these walls, in caring for each other and caring for those in need. We trust the promise of our Lord that we will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon us. And we trust our bishop-elect and we trust each other. That’s part of what it means to be the church. And so we stay home and wash our hands, and we wear our masks in public when we have to go out, and we listen to our bishop-elect, even as he listens to us, and we continue to pray together, even as we wait. But as you all well know, we have not ceased being the church. In closing, I want to share with you a reflection written by a seminary classmate of ours who is also the Bishop-elect of the Diocese of Missouri, the Rev Deon Johnson: “The work of the church is essential. The work of caring for the lonely, the marginalized, and the oppressed is essential. The work of speaking truth to power and seeking justice is essential. The work of being a loving, liberating, and life giving presence in the world is essential. The work of welcoming the stranger, the refugee and the undocumented is essential. The work of reconciliation and healing and caring is essential. The church does not need to “open” because the church never “closed”. We who make up the Body of Christ, the church, love God and our neighbors and ourselves so much that we will stay away from our buildings until it is safe. We are the church.”

Funeral Homily for Stella Nussbaum

Funeral homily_Stella Nussbaum May 18, 2020 Stella Nussbaum was a beautiful soul, and she had the unique gift of inspiring and inviting the souls of those around her to give themselves to beauty as well. As your wife, your mother, your grandmother, she loved you well and uniquely; she loved you colorfully, creatively, vibrantly, musically. Stella was rooted and grounded in her awareness of her own stature as a beloved child of God, and her love flowed out of the deep wellspring of her faith. She was sincere, kind, graceful, and grace-filled, and she had the gift of seeing the best in everyone. Her soul delighted to ring out in praise to God the Creator—through her music, her art, her gardening. She created beauty, sought out mystery and then shared those gifts readily with others, inviting others into that way of engaging with creation (discovering secret gardens and mountain streams filled with fairies). She shared her childlike awe and wonder with all of you; she gave you glimpses of the holy, and she nurtured you, helping you find your God-given potential and inviting you to discover you own passion and then to apply passion to any task. Stella’s death was a long and gradual death as she slipped away slowly, over many long years; you all walked with her and loved her as faithfully as any family could, and your love and care for her has been a fitting tribute to her. So today, we gather in this strange season, spread out but still united in the love that we shared for and with Stella. We give thanks for her life, and we give thanks for her death because we know that on April 22nd, she was received into the arms of our Lord, who is her long-time friend and not a stranger. We mourn the loss of this beautiful soul in this world with us, and we remember that death is not the end, but a change; that through Jesus’s death and resurrection, God has proven, once and for all, that God’s love is stronger than anything. God’s love is stronger than our frail bodies; God’s love is stronger than the horror that is Alzheimer’s; God’s love is stronger than anything-even death. Today we mourn the loss of Stella-both on April 22 and all the days before that, and we trust the hope of our faith that we will all feast again together at God’s table where Stella will know you and love you in the way that only Stella can love.

6th Sunday of Easter Year A 2020

Easter 6A 2020 May 17, 2020 This past week, I watched a TED talk by a scientist named Uri Alon. The talk was titled “When Science Demands a Leap Into the Unknown.” Alon talked about his experiences doing scientific research, going as far back as his research for his PhD, along with experience doing research with his students, and he uses his experiences doing improvisational theater to help reflect on the scientific process. He said that science presents the process of research as being moving from point a, which is the question, to point b which is the answer; but Alon has found this is not usually how science works. Instead, in trying to move between points a and b, as experiments fail and the way to the answer becomes blocked, scientists usually find themselves in a place where they get stuck. Alon calls this stuck place “the cloud,” and he says that in science “the cloud” is “an inherent part of research because it stands guard at the boundary between the known and the unknown.” If scientists can enter the cloud, leaving behind the answer “no” but instead saying “yes, and,” then often the way becomes open for creativity, new ideas, and the discovery of new things that had before been unknown. (I found it to be an interesting talk, and I’ll put the link to the TED talk on our Facebook page in case you’d like to watch it.)i In our Acts reading for today, we see Paul using some creativity to appeal to the Athenians in his proclamation of the gospel. He references their altar to an unknown God, and he invites them to enter the cloud with him, moving through the boundary between the known and the unknown to experience the reality of the living God, who is yet unknown to them. In our gospel reading, Jesus is preparing his disciples for his departure, but he promises that he will not leave them orphaned. He promises that they will be given the gift of the Holy Spirit, the advocate, the Spirit of truth who will be with them forever. Jesus is trying to prepare his disciples for their entering of “the cloud,” living into the unknown of what life will be like without him present. It is a scary and anxious prospect for each of them, and throughout the gospels, we see how they resist and reject the unknown, even up to their disbelief about his resurrection. We, too, are living in a season of the unknown. We all want it to be as simple as moving from point a to point b and finding an answer or a return to normal, but that is just not the reality we find ourselves in. At least for now, we are stuck; we are stuck in the cloud, in the unknown of what church is going to be like in the future, of what life is going to be like in the future. For those of us who are planners, this is an especially difficult season because there is just no planning when you are in the cloud. But we can take a lesson from Uri Alon, from Paul, and from Jesus, who has already sent us the Holy Spirit, the source of creativity and hope and advocacy, to join us in the unknown, in the cloud. Now is the time for us to reach out to at least one other person to offer support and encouragement, to give each other the courage to say “yes, and.” Because it is in the cloud, in the midst of the unknown, when creativity can happen, if we are open and receptive to it. Your invitation this week is to consider the question: “How is living with so much uncertainty opening you to new experiences?”ii And as you consider this, I invite you to contemplate how the Holy Spirit might be inviting you to live more creatively by answering “yes, and” in this season of the unknown. i.. https://www.ted.com/talks/uri_alon_why_science_demands_a_leap_into_the_unknown/transcript#t-930218 ii. https://www.ruthws.com/paintbox/2020/year-a/sixth-sunday-of-easter?ref=email And thanks to Ruth Woodliff-Stanley for sharing Uri Alon’s Ted talk in light of today’s readings.

Sermon for the Diocese of Georgia for the Feast of Julian of Norwich

Julian of Norwich_DioGA Evening Prayer May 6, 2020 I first met Dame Julian of Norwich, whose feast we commemorate today, when I was a junior in college. I was an English major, and I was taking a class titled Medieval Visionary Literature. We had just slogged our way through Dante’s Inferno, when we finally began the refreshingly weird and wonderful unit on Medieval Women mystics. Julian of Norwich was born in 1342, placing her childhood in the middle of the Black Death/Bubonic Plague and its recurrences; her adolescence, in the midst of the Peasants’ Revolts; and her adulthood, witnessing the violent and bloody suppression of religious dissenters. It is believed that approximately one-third of the population of England may have succumbed to the plague, and in Norwich, the death toll may have been as high as one-half of the city’s 13,000 inhabitants. Towards her thirtieth birthday, Julian fell gravely ill and neared death. In her illness and subsequent miraculous recovery, she experienced the ‘Showings’ or visions of the Passion of Christ and of his mother, Mary. She recovered from the illness and wrote down this experience, which was also the first book written in English by a woman. She wrote two versions of this account, the shorter one soon after her recovery, and a longer version after a number of years had passed. Between the two, she requested to live adjacent to the Church of St. Julian as an anchorite – a person set apart for prayer in seclusion and contemplation. But we do know that she continued to offer spiritual direction and counsel to those who sought her out in her isolation. You can find quotes of Julian’s all over the internet, the most famous one being: “All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.” But what really captured my imagination when I first encountered Julian of Norwich is how she referred to Jesus as our mother. In fact some scholars suggest that Julian is best known to us for her teachings on the motherhood of Christ. While the idea of the feminine face of the divine is not completely new to Julian (we can see it in the Isaiah passage for today and in other writings of the church), Julian takes the image beyond the usual stereotypes of the female or mother as “generative…and sacrificial,” “loving and tender,” and “nurturing”i I can remember being electrified as I read Julian’s words where she writes about Jesus as mother and how he cares for us daily: “In our spiritual birthing, he shows tenderness and care beyond any other mother in so much as our soul is of more value in his eyes. He kindles our understanding, he directs our ways, he eases our consciences, he comforts our soul, he lightens our heart and gives us, in part, knowledge and love of his blessed Godhead… If we fall, hastily he picks us up in his lovely embrace and touches us graciously… A mother may allow her child to fall sometimes and feel distress in various ways to be a lesson, but she will never, out of love, allow any kind of danger to come to her child. And though it is possible for our earthly mother to allow her child to perish, our heavenly mother Jesus will not allow us who are his children to die.”ii So, in this strange season, what does this mean for us to think about Jesus as our mother? How might that image feed and nurture us and give us hope? Even though not all of us have had the opportunity to be a mother, and some of us have not had the benefit of witnessing healthy mothering from our own birth mothers, I suspect that everyone can identify at least a few aspects of healthy motherhood. For me, motherhood means feeding people—my mother and my grandmother cooking for us or me cooking for my family. It means the way that the good mothers among us, both within the church and without, can help create a sense of belonging and offer nurture and care. It means delighting in the mystery of the other, in discovering hidden dimensions and talents. There is a demanding physicality to motherhood: whether it is in pregnancy and childbirth and nursing or in being climbed on like a jungle gym by a rambunctious toddler. Maternal love can be fiercely protective, and it acts as a tether to connect a mother to her children across time and space and even into and beyond death. What might it mean for you to think about Jesus as mother this week? Does it make you feel safe, uncomfortable? Think about what you need right now? What kind of nurture can Jesus offer you? Do you need to be fed? Do you need to find a safe place to rest? Do you need to belong? Do you need to have the space to test boundaries, to realize your potential, to fail or fall and be picked up again? Do you need to feel tethered, anchored to one who is greater than yourself, grounded and rooted in unconditional love? I’d like to close with Julian’s own words in the conclusion of her longer work, after which she has had 15 years to ponder the vision given to her by our Lord in her illness. May her vision be a gift and a comfort to us all during these trying days: “It was more than 15 years ago that I was answered in my spirit’s understanding. ‘You would know our Lord’s meaning in this thing? Know it well. Love was his meaning. Who showed it to you? Love. What did he show you? Love. Why did he show it? For love. Hold on to this and you will know and understand love more and more. But you will not know or learn anything else-ever!’ So it was that I learned that love was our Lord’s meaning. And I saw for certain, both here and elsewhere, that before ever he made us, God loved us; and that his love has never slackened, nor ever shall. In this love all his works have been done, and in this love he has made everything serve us; and in this love our life is everlasting….”iii i.From Caroline Bynum Jesus as Mother (Berkley and Los Angeles: U of California Press, 1982) p 131 ii.Julian of Norwich. Revelations of Divine Love, Chapter 61 iii.Julian of Norwich. Revelations of Divine Love, Chapter 86

Easter 3A_2020

3rd Sunday of Easter Year A April 26, 2020 Last Sunday, I began my homily by sharing with you that I had been thinking about grief and hope the week before, and I had realized that grief doesn’t always look like grief, and hope doesn’t always look like hope. I then proceeded to talk about grief and how that connected to Thomas in last week’s gospel and how that may connect to our lives in our current situation. Spurred on by a small phrase in this week’s gospel, I’ve been thinking about hope, and how it doesn’t always look like what we expect hope to look like. Our gospel story for today is, perhaps, my favorite story in all of scripture. Definitely in my top 5. The story picks up immediately after Luke’s telling of the resurrection. Two of Jesus’s followers are on the way to Emmaus, and they are discussing the recent events of Jesus’s death and resurrection. Jesus, himself, joins them on the road, but they don’t recognize him. He asks what they are talking about, and they tell him; and buried in the heart of their telling is the little phrase that has so caught my attention: “but we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel”. “But we had hoped…” The story goes on to tell about how Jesus interprets the scriptures for them around himself, and when they get to where they are going, they invite him to stay and join them. Together they eat, and as Jesus blesses and breaks the bread for them, their eyes become opened, and they recognize him. They race back to Jerusalem (the 2nd 7 mile walk in that day) to tell the others the good news, saying to each other, “were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road…” It’s a beautiful story about how we encounter the Risen Christ in unexpected ways and places and how he often makes his presence known to us both in ordinary ways, such as meals together, as well as in one of our most sacred acts, the celebration of the Eucharist together. But this week, I am stuck by the poignancy of those four words those two men utter: “but we had hoped…” “It is said that Ernest Hemmingway was once challenged to write a short story in 6 words. He replied by taking out a pen and writing on a napkin: “For sale: baby shoes, never used.” ‘It’s not just the tragedy of what happened that hurts, but the gaping hole of all that could have happened but won’t.’”i During this strange season, I’ve come to realize that much of what I often think of as hope is more about busy-ness or planning, or looking ahead to something fun. And I’ve been deprived of those endeavors of late. We can’t really plan our summer at this point, and we’d had some plans. But we had hoped… This type of hope is stymied or frustrated when our plans are disrupted or set awry, but there is a deeper type of hope that is available to us even now, in this strange liminal space. The scholar and theologian “Cynthia Bourgeault makes a powerful distinction between [these two different types of hope. There is] what she calls ordinary hope [this kind of hope that I’m talking about, the kind of hope we expect which is] “tied to outcome . . . . an optimistic feeling . . . because we sense that things will get better in the future” and [there is] mystical hope ‘that is a complete reversal of our usual way of looking at things. Beneath the ‘upbeat’ kind of hope that parts the seas and pulls rabbits out of hats, this other hope weaves its way as a quiet, even ironic counterpoint.’”ii She writes, “We might make the following observations about this other kind of hope, which we will call mystical hope. In contrast to our usual notions of hope: 1. Mystical hope is not tied to a good outcome, to the future. It lives a life of its own, seemingly without reference to external circumstances and conditions. 2. It has something to do with presence—not a future good outcome, but the immediate experience of being met, held in communion, by something intimately at hand. 3. It bears fruit within us at the psychological level in the sensations of strength, joy, and satisfaction: an “unbearable lightness of being.” But mysteriously, rather than deriving these gifts from outward expectations being met, it seems to produce them from within. . . [It] is all too easy to understate and miss that hope is not intended to be an extraordinary infusion, but an abiding state of being…. We ourselves are not the source of that hope; we do not manufacture it. But the source dwells deeply within us and flows to us with an unstinting abundance, so much so that in fact it might be more accurate to say we dwell within it. . . . It is no accident or coincidence that the Risen Christ shows up to join his two disciples on the road to Emmaus just when their ordinary hope has failed them. Their plans for the future have been laid waste, and suddenly, he is with them, and he provides them with access to that mystical hope, that abiding state of being. By engaging the scriptures with them, he reconnects them to the wellspring of hope, the source of all hope that dwells deep within them, and after they recognize the Risen Christ, only then are they able to recognize the mystical hope which he has reconnected them with: “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”iii How much of this mystical kind of hope might we also be experiencing these days but not recognizing because it does not look like ordinary hope to us? Each one of us, in our creation, has been connected to this deep wellspring of hope in our souls. God’s goodness which produces this hope flows in us and through us, and it is always available to us. We don’t have to produce our hope; we just have to tap into that which is already there. Your invitation this week is to look beyond the disappointments that this season offers to your plans and your expectations, and to pay attention to the times when you experience an unbearable lightness of being or your heart burning strangely within you; listen, this week, for where the hope that wells from God bubbles up in your life. i.This portion is cited from my own Easter 3A sermon from 2014 (preached at St. Peter’s by-the-Sea in Gulfport, MS. The portion quoted in this passage is written by David Lose on Workingpreacher.org, but I can’t find more details on the original citation such as the year. ii. This is Richard Rohr’s introduction (with my voice in parentheses) introducing Bourgeault’s work in his daily meditation titled The Universal Pattern : Mystical Hope Thursday,  April 16, 2020. The Full text can be found here: https://cac.org/mystical-hope-2020-04-16/ iii. As quoted in the meditation listed above. Adapted from Cynthia Bourgeault, Mystical Hope: Trusting in the Mercy of God (Cowley Publications: 2001), 3, 5, 9-10, 17, 20, 42.

Easter 2A_2020

Easter 2A_2020 April 19, 2020 This week, our readings have had me thinking about grief, and the conclusion that I have come to is that grief doesn’t always look like grief. Every year, on this Second Sunday of Easter, we get the same gospel reading—the story that begins on the evening of the day of resurrection, that sees the disciples locked in together confused and afraid even after having heard Mary Magdalene’s proclamation of the resurrection: (“I have seen the Lord!”) Jesus appears to them—greeting them in peace, offering them reassurance and hope, and giving them the gift of the Holy Spirit. But Thomas isn’t there with them. When they tells Thomas what has happened, he still doesn’t believe them, telling them he will need to see some proof of this astounding event. And from that moment on, throughout all the intervening centuries, he has been called “Doubting Thomas.” But what if what we have always interpreted as doubt is actually grief. Would it change how we read the story, how we think about our faith, how we understand ourselves if, instead of thinking of him as “Doubting Thomas,” we think of him as “Grieving Thomas”? I listened to a podcast the other day; it was an interview conducted by Brene Brown (who I’ve talked about before). She’s a sociologist whose research focus is on shame. And a couple of weeks ago, she interviewed a man named David Kessler, who has worked in the field of grief for decades.i. Kessler co-authored books with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross who is famous for articulating a schema for the stages of grief, and Kessler has written a recent book that expands those original five stages to include an additional 6th stage, which is finding meaning. But not only has David Kessler worked with grieving people for at least 40 years, he has also experienced his own loss in the unexpected death of his 21 year old son in 2016. It was fascinating for me to listen in on this conversation about grief between these two wise people. And here are some of my take-aways from that. The 5 descriptive states of grief show that grief doesn’t always look like grief; sometimes grief looks like denial; sometimes grief looks like anger; sometimes grief looks like bargaining, sometimes like depression, and sometimes it can even look like acceptance. Grief isn’t neat or orderly; grief is messy, and it is unique to each one of us in how it manifests, even as there is a common pattern in how we grieve. David Kessler defines grief as “the death of something.” It can be the death of a person, a relationship, a job, a situation, a whole way of life. And one of the things that struck me most is when David Kessler said, “Right now, we are dealing with the collective loss of the world that we knew. The world we knew is now gone forever.” We are all grieving, even if we deny it, even if it doesn’t always look like what we think of as grief. He continues, “We’re in this together; it won’t last for forever. But we need to go through it and feel the feelings.” As a part of this process, David Kessler says that we can spend time creating and naming meaningful moments together. He says we can each ask ourselves, “What can I do of meaning right now? How can we all do meaningful moments in the midst of a pandemic?” And when you are in a meaningful moment, he suggests that you name it, and be grateful for it. I think part of how we find meaning in this is to tap into our compassion for each other and to recognize that grief doesn’t always look like grief in the way that we act. We are invited to look below the surface behaviors and actions of anger, denial, belligerence, fear to see what they cloak/hide, which is often grief. How might it change us if we assumed that every person we see, in real life, on social media, in the news is grieving and responded out of compassion for that grief? We are invited to sit with each other in our grief, not rushing to meaning, but being present with the loss, feeling the feelings and trusting the hope that meaning will come. Our gospel story for today is an important reminder for us right now because Jesus doesn’t leave Thomas alone in his grief. He comes back the next week, visiting the disciples again when Thomas is present. He offers Thomas the meaning that he craves, even as he invites him to touch his wounds, the heart of his own grief. This week, I invite you to try to be more present to your own grief and the grief of those around you, and I invite you to know that Jesus is present there with you as well. i. https://brenebrown.com/podcast/david-kessler-and-brene-on-grief-and-finding-meaning/

Easter Day 2020

The Day of Resurrection: Easter Day 2020 April 12, 2020 I’ve been having a weekly Zoom call with some of my closest friends and classmates from seminary. Every week, we gather virtually, and we talk about how we are doing and then we talk about the readings for the coming Sunday. (It has been one of many life-giving moments for me during this strange season.) A couple of weeks ago, I was shocked when one of our group told us that he was trying to convince his bishop to let him postpone Easter until his congregation could gather again and celebrate it together. As I’ve thought of this over the course of these past couple of weeks, I think about the song of his own longing that was revealed in that statement (which may find echoes in some of our own hearts). How can it really be Easter without….fill in the blank here. (New Easter clothes. Easter Egg hunts. The flowering of the cross. The Easter hymns. The Eucharist. The Easter brunch or lunch with extended family…) But the joyfully shocking truth of Easter is that resurrection will happen, whether we are ready for it or not. In fact, this year, we are probably more similar to those first followers of Jesus’ as they encountered the shock of the resurrection than we have ever been in any of our lifetimes. Still reeling from the shock and the sadness of Jesus’s sudden and violent death; afraid for their own lives, so they have locked themselves in their own homes for safety; they creep out out when it is still dark (with gloves and mask in place?) to discover that the tomb is empty (just like our churches today). The body of Jesus is nowhere to be found. And then they are more saddened; more shocked; more dismayed; more frightened. Just when they thought it couldn’t get any worse—the tomb is empty. So then they run. Mary Magdalene runs to get Peter and John. Peter and John race back, discovering for themselves that the tomb is, in fact empty. And then, they go back home. But Mary Magdalene stays. She stays to grieve some more outside the empty tomb, and she encounters two angels, and she encounters the Risen Christ (who tells her she’s got to maintain appropriate social distancing). And he sends her back to the other disciples with a message, and so she goes back and tells them, “I have seen the Lord.” And you know what happens? Nothing. A week later, they are still huddled behind the locked doors of their homes because of their fear, but the risen Christ doesn’t leave them there. He appears to them where they are and continues to help them to encounter the resurrection. In fact, it really isn’t until after Jesus’s ascension and the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost that those scared, fragmented disciples become transformed into the resurrection community that will spread the good news to the ends of the earth and will transform the world around them from their day all the way to our own. Even without the normal trappings that we have come to expect and enjoy, resurrection still happens and will continue to happen. We need this day, now more than ever, to remember the power of the love of God; a love that is stronger than loneliness, than sickness; a love that is stronger than fear or the exhaustion that comes from too-much-togetherness. This day, we remember and celebrate the strange truth and the joy of the resurrection: that nothing that happens to us or that we do can separate us from the love of God, and that God’s love is stronger than absolutely anything. Even death. A couple of weeks ago, I came across a blessing I had shared on March 27, 2016: It is titled EASTER BLESSING by the Late Irish priest and poet John O’Donohue. It’s from his Dawn Mass Reflections at Corcomroe Abbey. "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." How are you called to search for the light of Easter in your heart and then give that light away generously? What is the new beginning to which you may be called once you discover the resurrection gifts of healing and light and courage during this strange season?