Holy Saturday 2013

Easter is a hard one to explain. It is a hard one to talk about especially if you are trying to sound like you understand it.

Sometimes, though, I think it is like a jazz piece that you listened to a year ago and suddenly you hear it again and both the person you were a year ago and the person you are this morning are there at the same time. But you know that that cannot be, that one of those two people is the ghost, the not-quite-there one.

You think you know that it cannot be, that there have been eruptions of vigorous life as well as unmistakable dyings that separate the person you are this morning from the person you were a year ago. There are things that you thought you knew about yourself and the world a year ago, about the people you loved, about the people who loved you when you were listening to a piece of jazz and not thinking you would ever hear it differently. But now you are hearing it differently.

You cannot set about hearing something differently. You cannot plan it. You risk otherwise not really hearing it anymore and that is not just a dying, it is an erasing and a destroying something that still has some of your life in it. Easter wisdom is that you want both ways of hearing that piece of jazz.

Easter joy comes from discovering you might just be someone who can.