Easter Morning

A few days ago I was in the kitchen sneaking a taste of dinner, exclaiming how delicious it was and my husband laughed and said that I had been saying that about everything.  He makes dinner nearly every night, it’s one of the things that it is hard for me to do.  I usually feel appreciative and am inclined not to find fault, but lately it is different and his comment made me realize that something really has shifted.  The entire world is suddenly beautiful, exquisitely, almost painfully beautiful.  Everywhere I look there is something so glorious; it is just calling out for love and appreciation.  Sometimes it is obvious, spring flowers riotously blooming in my yard, a beautiful song, or a lovely painting. 

Sometimes it is less obvious and more deeply mysterious.  Don had heard an NPR interview with one of the soldiers that appeared in Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger’s  award winning movie, “Restrepo”.   Tim’s death last Wednesday in Misrata, Libya while covering Gaddafi’s attack on rebel forces, seemed to call for a moment of witnessing, of seeing what had called him so strongly.  Saturday morning we spent watching “Restrepo”.  The movie ended.  We sat, tears streaming, feeling blessed by an opportunity to see and understand a reality we would rather not know.  The courage of both the photographers and the amazing men in the U.S. Army, who shared their courage, their fear, and their indomitable spirits so powerfully, evoked a wave of love and gratitude.  I don’t understand what the war in Afghanistan is about.  I need to spend some time attempting to understand.  The immense complexity was obvious in the film.  The incomprehension apparent in the faces of the Afghani elders coupled with the sheer impossibility of the military mission roused questions and didn’t attempt to answer them.

The film left me acutely aware of the change in how I see the world.  Everything calls for that heart opening response, evokes the desire to pour out love, to reach out and touch, to give whatever I can give.  There is not much I have – a smile, a laugh, a hug, shared tears.  So small, but it is all any of us really have.  It is only when we offer the small gifts that we have that the spirit much larger than us can move through us and into the world.  Mother Theresa knew this.  She looked out at the world around her, saw that there were people who needed what she had to give and she gave it.  It is all that any of us can do. 

Some of us face situations where what is before us is very large and if we really understood what was being asked of us, we wouldn’t even begin.  I think of Lincoln with the impossible task of the Presidency when the entire country was coming apart at the seams, I think of Martin Luther King, Jr. meeting with love the shocking level of hate endured by African-American citizens throughout our country.  I think of Gandhi.  I think of Barack Obama, willing to lead in a time when finding a path through seems impossible.  

These dramatic examples can erroneously shift our focus onto the people that history has framed so vividly for us to see, blinding us to awareness of the real power that makes the great things they did possible and the small things that each of us can do, great.  Riveting our attention on the outcome, we are blinded to the spirit that makes all things possible.   Our ability to contribute to the beauty all around us and to see our own beauty lies in looking deeper.  It lies in recognizing that all actions begin inside of us and carry forward into the world.  All great things and all the small ones that matter begin with what moves us forward.  It is possible to see and surrender to that force directly or to spend our lives wandering within the constricted confines of our minds.  Life acts through us, but usually we are tangled in our crusted beliefs, our fears and insatiable needs.  We can’t see the beauty, or give way to the force struggling to reach out through us.

This force:   God, Allah, Yahweh, Jah, Spirit in whatever name you clothe it, is not an idea, not a myth, but the power that pushes flowers up in our gardens in spring.  It is the power that moves every action we take.  Christ, Buddha, Muhammad and countless other great souls have tried to point out this force and move our hearts and minds to see and embrace it, to allow it to flow through our lives unimpeded by our fear.   Their teachings are meant to help us shed our unnecessary baggage and allow us to move through our lives sharing our hearts and minds with each other, creatively building a world.  They didn’t come to save us, but to teach us to save ourselves. 

Forty years ago I rode my bicycle, alone, before dawn out to the banks of an irrigation canal on the plains outside of Denver.  I was seventeen years old.  I carried my breakfast and a Bible and sat reading the story of Christ’s Resurrection as I watched the sunrise.  I was not a practicing Christian and I’m not sure what motivated my actions that day.   I felt Christ’s presence on that morning.  This Easter morning, forty years later, I again feel his presence  and I am humbled and awed.   He is not asking for our belief, he is asking us to see the world as he saw it, with infinite compassion and love.