Finding Easter

When I was a kid, Easter was new handmade dresses from Gramma for me and my sister, and going to my Unitarian Universalist church with the whole family. There was always an Easter sweater we had to put over our dresses- because Easter is colder than you think. After church it was plastic eggs filled with goodies, and hard-boiled eggs that were more fun to decorate than to eat. One year I got a plush bunny in my easter basket, and you can tell by the fact that I still have it that it was special to me.

As an adult, a parent, and a minister, it became less and less clear to me what the Easter of Jesus had to do with bunnies and eggs. I learned that Easter comes from the name of an old Anglo Saxon Goddess, called Oestara, in an ancient German earth-centered tradition. Called Eostre in England, celebrated at the beginning of spring in those old pre-Christian traditions.

It makes sense, if you live in our part of the world, to celebrate these days of growing sunlight, the return of life to the world. Every day I go outside and watch the ground near my house go from grey and frozen, to muddy and sprinkled with the first green shoots emerging. Some sunny days you can practically watch them grow! Last week the little purple crocuses in my yard that had come up through the snow were waiting, waiting, waiting in the cold and grey, until finally a sunny day came and they stretched their petals wide like they wanted to hug the sun, and the bees, which had been hiding wherever bees hide in the cold and grey, were humming from blossom to blossom. The birds are so noisy now when I get up early in the morning to walk my dogs. I hear new songs I haven’t heard all winter. They chase each other and I think many of them are trying to find a partner and a nest where they can have children like the rabbit in our story.

One spring I did see a bunny in my backyard, but most years I don’t see any rabbits. Squirrels though we have in abundance. The Squirrels have spring fever for sure. Many UUs who celebrate Easter, are celebrating this season of growth and new life in nature- that moment when all the plants and critters in your ecosystem know in their bones and roots that the hardest part of winter is past, and as we will sing in a moment “nature wakes from seeming death” and the wheel of the year has turned, and now it feels like spring, and we can get on with the joyful and challenging work of growing. As we sung earlier “Herb and plant that, winter long, slumbered at their leisure, now bestirring green and strong, find in growth their pleasure”

We know from our history books that when the Christian church was forming, they often put their new Christian holidays at times when people already had celebrations, and Easter is a good example of this. In the Christian tradition, Easter is the end of a long story, with many challenges along the way, the story of the life of Jesus, his teachings, and the brutality and sadness of his death. Because of course when Jesus died, everyone thought he was gone forever, that this big swell of energy he had built, all his teachings, all they had come together for, we gone, crushed by the Roman government. And so there was a sad desolate time of mourning after his death, until 3 days later when the tomb where Jesus had been laid was empty, and Jesus showed himself to his followers, alive again, miraculously resurrected.

These two very different Easter celebrations, really have nothing to do with one another, except for that one thing they both say to our psyches, our hearts and spirits- that even when there are no signs of life, when there seems to be no reason to hope, perhaps there is still life waiting beneath the frozen ground, even in the tomb. For people who live in a climate like ours, the spirit naturally wants to celebrate this turning of the wheel, after the long cold bleak winter, the bursts of yellow and green and purple. Our psyches see the harmony between the Christian and earth-centered spring holidays of rebirth and resurrection. When we see proof of life returning, proof of rebirth and resurrection, it’s a relief and a joy. And it reminds us of something that happens in our hearts, in our spirits when we ourselves are surprised by new life.

One confusing bit is that Easter moves around the calendar- it’s held on the first Sunday after the Paschal Full Moon, the first full moon after the vernal equinox. (I was this many years old when I learned that.) Wednesday night was our full moon, so here we are, celebrating Easter. That also means some years Easter is earlier, and some years later. I remember one year I was preaching at the UU Fellowship of Big Flats one March Easter, and my son volunteered to hide all the eggs outside so they’d be ready for an egg hunt after the service. Well, all through the Easter service we watched the thick snow falling fast through the big windows. The sky was grey and dark. It snowed so hard no one could find the eggs when the service was over- they were all buried! I will tell you it was hard to hope that Easter, even though I was the one in the pulpit saying that spring always, always comes, even when it seems like it never will. Those are the times when stories of renewal and resurrection are especially important, to show our spirits that what feels like an ending, can be the start of something new. Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes: “Stories set the inner life into motion, and this is particularly important where the inner life is frightened, wedged or cornered. Story… shows us the way out, down, or up, and for our trouble, cuts for us fine wide doors in previously blank walls.” [Women Who Run with the Wolves p. 20]

That is why in the Christian tradition, Easter follows the long season of Lent, where observant Christians are encouraged to take the time to dive deep into their own spirits and into their relationship with the divine. There can be no resurrection without all the other pieces of the story.

The same is true for the earth centered traditions who mark spring with celebration. The stunning gift of the yellow daffodil is that it emerges in the cold and grey when few things are yellow. The beauty of the crocus is that it risks blooming in the snow and frost, into the messy leaf litter of last year’s trees.

Celebrating Easter means Listening into the season -- of our web of life, of our spirits. We pause today for a long loving look at this unique year that will never come again and has never been before. How is it with your spirit this Eastertime?

Although Christian churches all around the world are telling the same story this morning, celebrating the most important and holy day of their church year, there is no moment when all of spring happens all at once- the trees like to sleep in a bit after the crocus and daffodils wake up and start their year. From my office window I can see the little tree buds swelling, but I haven’t seen any leaves yet.

So spring, if by spring we mean that moment when petals and leaves and wings unfurl and soak in the sun, it comes at different times to different plants, and different creatures. While a couple bees buzz in my crocus blooms now, some pollinators sleep in until May, which is sensible, because there’s only those 5 flowers in my yard right now, not enough pollen for everyone.

I live down on the flat part of my town, but my friends live up in the hills. Just last week I saw cars driving down into the town with snow on them and I wonder at how differently the seasons unfold in different places. Sometimes it can be weeks before the same flowers bloom up on the hills, weeks before their snow melts. In our congregation this morning we have folks form all over- One family is joining us from south Carolina where it has been definitely spring for a while now. The sweet children's story "The Bunny Who Found Easter" assures us that “At Eastertime there are always rabbits.” But it simply cannot be true that everywhere around the world there are rabbits at Eastertime.

This is all to say, that Easter is a movable feast. It does not come at the same time every year. It does not look the same for all of us. I also mean the Easter in our spirits-- the calendar of our spirits sometimes does and sometimes does not line up with the calendar of the banks or of sun and moon. It can be sad if everyone around you is celebrating “Now the dark, cold days are o’er, spring and gladness are before” and your spirit feels like it is still in the tomb, like it is that last tree with no leaves.

There is a crooked Catalpa tree in our back yard that is always the last to leaf out. “I think that one’s dead” said my husband last year. But I remembered how it was with this tree, and sure enough when the time was right the tree burst out these gigantic heart shaped leaves giving shade to the whole back yard just in time for the hot sun of summer.

How is it for you, right now, today? Does your heart feel like a daffodil in full bloom? Like a bird singing as it waits for sunrise? Like a bunny overrun with young ones? Like a bee bravely looking for the first flower? Or do you feel more like a flower bulb that is still waiting in the dark earth for the right time to emerge? Like the great Catalpa tree who wants more sun before it can leaf out?

Easter is a season of the spirit and not of the calendar. Here, today in the twin tiers, it’s a great day to notice the first buds on the bare trees, the rain and the mud, the green shoots, and how the flowers change from day to day. All of these are spring, all of these are life. If your hearts are leaping with the spring, let them leap. And if your heart is still waiting in the chilly earth, let our Easter celebration remind your tender spirit that when the season is right for you, your spirit will unfurl and bloom.