Dream Away
An Easter evolution
Easter has always been the most sacred of Christian festivals, celebrating the rolling away of a stone and the emergence of new life, a story told and retold for millennia by billions of believers, wrapped in the mystery of a miracle, in the wonder of what life might be should resurrection come to us, as well. Calculating the impact of that - the story told so many times through so many voices and languages to so many generations of believers - is beyond comprehension, beyond our capacity to imagine. How could such a story not be powerful?
Even as my understanding of the miraculous fascinations of the Easter story evolved, it continued to hold a meaningful place in my life. How could it not? Released from a fantastical interpretation, it becomes the story of our day to day, the possibility of a new beginning, of the letting go of lives we no longer wish to live, mistakes we have made, follies chosen in ignorance. The possibility of the birth of a new way of being in the world, stuck, even as we ever are, in the bodies in which we arrived, lies, always, just underneath the skin of introspection. No piercing of the flesh or vile, horrific punishments. No linen wraps. No dark silence in a tomb. No three breathless days. No miraculous rolling away of stones. Simply self-awareness, decisions made, and the first, struggling steps of letting go, giving up, crossing a boundary into something new, something hard, something that is the only way to the fullness of life. My full life. Your full life. The only one we can ever possibly get right.
Palm and Easter Sundays
As my understandings crystallized, the seasonal services shifted. We moved from the recitation of an ancient story wrapped in supernatural beliefs to one grounded in the reality of our own fragile lives. Palm Sunday became a time for the retelling of our most brilliant dreams, the lives we were leading and all the grand wonders we had accomplished. It was a celebration, colourful and bouyant, songs filled with the positive energy of triumph.
Until reality marched into the room (figuratively, of course; I was a liturgist, not a magician!). Everything changed. Tone. Music. Usually the spectacle involved some kind of destruction. It could get dramatic.
And everyone left the pieces of the dream shattered, scattered, deflated, and abandoned on the floor. There was no celebratory music at the end. We went home.
The following week, things changed, of course. Building on the devastations of the previous service, we would create something new, something undergirded by hope and a commitment to the work of living as true to our commitments as we possibly could. It was always a hope-filled time, each holding an awareness of his or her own fragility, the potential for failure, for not getting it right. But in community, one can hold to the possibility of support, encouragement, the kind of repair that only one heart can bring another. It was always uplifting to be with people eager to be present to one another, honest with one another, holding out forgiveness and hope to one another.
The Easter of Earth
The final set of Dream Away services I led focused on Earth, its fragility, our responsibility to, and dependence upon it. We know we have messed up. We know we have undone Earth’s intricately interwoven systems. We know we have mapped out a future flung off course, far from the ecological stability we have taken for granted these last thousands of years. We know we cannot stop it now, that we might only prepare ourselves for the trauma of the massive systems’ changes that will undo the stuff of civilization upon which we have depended. And we will know deep trauma until we find a new way of living together on a planet that will continue to change for millennia to come because of our brief time upon it.
The following poems framed the conversation that Easter Sunday. They sought to set out the wonder of each element through which we interact with our beautiful planet. Palm Sunday had set up the trauma. Easter Sunday reminded us of the beauty we yet behold: Earth, Air, Fire, Water. The beauty we must hallow, protect, sustain. May their gifts be known and cherished by every future generation.
Earth
The silent, patient earth lies as gift beneath our every moment, offering her passive presence to the world, a constant in our lives, our dreams, our past, our future. We’ve wondered at its mysteries, each offered up over the course of time, marvelled at the violence of its birth, read in ores and crystals, and thrived on the oily residue of lives it buried millennia ago. We found our way into its depths and conjured myriad ways to make use of its bounty: nourishment; shelter; clothing; timber, stone and ore; the beauty that ever amazes. We have marvelled at its yield, foraged for its foods and cultivated them; apples, breadfruit, bananas, grapes; quinoa, amaranth, barley, rice; cashews, almonds, acorns, chestnuts; lentils, beans, peas, corn. We’ve rested our bodies on its cool forest floors, lain, prostrate on its warm sandy shores, conquered its mountains, one step at a time, and felt the breeze brush its hillside meadows. We’ve cut its stones into jewels, mixed its ores into structures warmed our floors with its heat, and stood, transfixed, at light setting over its hills, the sun running, brilliant, through its caverns, or cresting on its highest peaks. And we have felt its dance and rhythm as fields of grain have waved us by, reaching toward to the sun. We have built empires around the earth’s bounty, spreading as far and wide as needed to feed the hope of our futures. We have welcomed our children into the wonder of our experience of the earth, into the wonder of life, itself.
Air
The air,
invisible,
wraps us with its subtle presence:
supporting life,
carrying seeds,
whirling shelter out of rock,
frothing waves upon the ocean.
We have wondered at its mysteries,
and stretched our minds around its peculiar capacities:
breathed it in deeply,
our lungs sorting its molecules to our needful purpose
through our every moment of joy,
every second of sorrow,
every hour of boredom,
each urgent lung-full pressing us through
to a new level of endurance.
It has moved within every promise we have made,
every pledge we have broken,
every word or act of love,
and refused to yield
in every frozen moment of our fear.
We’ve feasted on foods that would have withered away without it,
wild mushrooms grown of a spore it tossed into the perfect place,
vegetables risen into its seeming empty space
grains, sprouted in the open fields.
And we have thought little of its place
in the work of our communication,
carrying between us,
one to the other,
ideas, poetry, music,
opened our hearts to wonder,
our lives to possibilities,
our joys and sorrows
carried through its seeming emptiness,
in word,
touch,
emotion sent, received.
From the quiet intake of a first breath,
to the silent emptiness of the last,
we live within its gift of life.
We have built empires wrestling with its tumultuous forces,
or nestled in its peaceful, balmy presence,
its endless gift feeding the hope of our futures,
and welcoming our children into the wonder we breathe
into the wonder of life, itself.
Fire
The fire of the cosmos
- boiling, burning, cleansing, rupturing -
is conquered by our fragile, human hands
and put to work:
cooking, heating,
forging our cities of steel:
we tame it,
and force it to yield to our purposes.
We have wondered at its mysteries,
stretched our minds around its peculiar capacities,
turning solids to liquid,
and liquid to air;
vaporizing flesh,
restoring life.
We use it to burn the earth’s ancient secretions,
warming our cities,
transporting people, food, resources
- whatever “goods” we want -
from one place to another,
across countries,
around continents,
over oceans,
through skies.
We’ve used it to pump and warm water,
purify ore,
turn tungsten to light,
air to heat,
earthbound to airborne.
We’ve harnessed its power
to blast holes in mountains
that we might drive through them
or mine them for ore;
spun chemicals to threads
woven into suits
that walked the moon
reached through a magnificent combustion,
the pure, raw power of the flame.
Fire has given us that power
from the moment we harnessed it to push back the night:
both protector and weapon,
both feared and revered.
We have built empires taming fire to our needs,
boiling, melting and vaporizing earth’s elements
into the miracles of our time,
fire’s ceaseless gift
feeding the hope of our futures,
and welcoming our children
into the wonder we experience
– the wonder of life, itself.
Water
Blue. Blue. Blue. Blue.
Whole, unbroken horizons of blue.
We stretch out comfortably upon our water-bound territories,
scarce considering the millennia of risk-taking,
leave-taking,
hope-seeking,
setting out
- banished and in fear,
or brazen and dream-filled -
in canoes,
on rafts,
in galleons,
under steam,
seeking refuge,
glory,
riches,
freedom,
the floating-toward-possibility,
the heading-for-a-new-life
that brought us to our current home.
Wrapping our planet,
water is as much our home
as is the ground upon which we build our lives.
We have wondered at water’s peculiar capacities,
stood in it as it rained from the skies,
carved it into solid, frozen blocks to fashion shelter,
caught it in our hands as it tumbled down streams,
or flowed from our wells
or listened as it slashed against our walls.
We have captured its crashing beauty
in paint and photograph and sound,
walked through canyons carved over time
as it slipped past stone,
smoothing it away at a molecular pace.
It has washed the blood from a newborn’s still-flushed skin,
scrubbed away our daily grime,
and gently bathed the remnants of vitality
from the lifeless forms of those we’ve loved.
We have floated under the warm summer sun
on its buoyant, tensile strength,
run through the waves
of its ceaseless dance with the moon,
and marvelled at its frozen flakes
captured on our mittens.
Mystery and wonder.
Without its fluid movement in our every cell,
our bodies are but piles of ash and mineral dust.
And we,
these latest generations,
as every single one before us,
have slaked our thirsts
with the fluid combination of these three simple atoms
– two hydrogen, one oxygen –
the wonder of water, the basis of life.
We have built empires
proximate to the fresh waters captured far beneath the earth
or meandering upon its surface,
cleansing, healing, and welcoming our children
into the wonder of this flowing elixir – the wonder of life itself
Thank you for being here. For sharing my Easter with me, my hope that we will carry on long after the scarcity or disappearance of many of the things we still believe will last forever - grocery stores, transportation, abundant fuel, easy access to peanut butter. Hold to one another on the journey. After all, travelling together is always best.
This is lovely and meaningful. Thank you Gretta.
A benediction.