It is Easter morning and I am not in a consecrated building singing "Up from the Grave He Arose or doing an Easter egg hunt with multitudes of children competing for symbols that will be forgotten as quickly as eaten, or trying to make small talk with their parents about the weather,or worse, trying to discuss the most mysterious, transcendant event as the resurrection in some contrived christian vernacular.

Instead, I am sitting here after washing dishes, making tea, reading e-mail and listening to my husband do art collages with my daughters ( their new found passion). I must admit, it does not sound very reverent or traditional and I feel a twinge of guilt that I am not dressed up watching Gregg sing his would be solo, having some celebration of food and drink with friends and family and wondering what clever spin the seeker church will try to put on this magnanimous expression of God's love for his Son and creation. And yet, my heart is full.

In the last three years I have been ruined by the love of Jesus. This destruction was necessary and as I look back on some moments so painful and terrible in which I truly thought it possible to die from a broken heart I see, though not fully, the purposes in it. Resurrection requires death. Most of my life I have been trying to survive..live. Looking for my place...identity, blessing, healing and freedom , I now see i have tried to obtain them through people, my own anemic efforts, and low sense of value...And in some weird subconscious way, hoping all the while that God would relent to my feeble displays and adolescent demands out of pity or just his good nature and I would squeeze by into his kingdom unnoticed living invisibly among others and He would from time to time visit me and require little. But, the Lord so lovingly has crucified me and my very low expectations. He has recently in the silence and solitude made clear his very forward intentions and though they continue to take away my breath and life, I desire them.

I Believe it brings pain to The Father of the Heaven's when his children live their whole lives avoiding their own death ( as I often continue to do). We try to find the right bible study, message, community, ministry ,code of morals and principles to build upon a christian identity that has been passed on to us by other non-dead vessels or we create it ourselves with our own self-actualization---happiness or Legacyof Jesus as the end.

On this Easter morning sitting in my suburban excess in a country naked with abundance , through the memories of these last painful years ,I imagine my self as a dead person lying on the lifeless slab of my false-self ,sins and holy efforts. I feel and smell the shroud of personal failures and the coldness of those who have hurt and abandon me in vulnerable moments.
And yet, I hear the singing of birds outside this solitude of death, the wind blowing through the new greenness of leaf and blosom and a voice speaks my name so tenderly and quietly. My eyes open to see my Beloved One.. my Resurrector. His eyes deep and full, hair dark and annointed with oil and the incense of my prayers.... and he says," Arise my lovely one Arise." And I am alive to Him and Him alone.

So I will end this day by going to a ritual in honor of Jesus created by very young beloved's. I will not put my hope or expectation in that vessel, but I will keep in my mind and heart the face and reason for my true life. I will look at the soft cheek of my children as thay fidget and wonder of their place in this world and my husband as he expresses his path of worship....... and I will surrender them to a Love that is gloriously ruinous and fiercely life giving .

You see a Sunday of candy eggs,flowers, family,hymns, a ham or lamb, sentiments and seeker services of a cross and a grave and new membership classes are not the expession of the reality of this profound event. And these symbolic efforts, though pleasant, will only keep us clinging to delusions, and break the Father's heart until you allow him, in the way He desires, to crucify you and your false images so that in the most intimate place, He may look deep into your soul and call you from the tomb to your true life. May you never look back.

John 11:25" I am the resurresction and the life".....