Easter Sunday

This picture was taken on Easter Sunday, 1948 or so. I think Daddy was as proud of that car as he was of his two beautiful daughters. Norma Jean is in pink and I am in yellow, both of us the picture of spring. The picture is faded now, but the Easter baskets are still appropriately filled with eggs and candy. That tar-paper shack in the background was the Base housing where we lived at the time. I remember that dress, so I must have more memories rolling around in my head that I can no longer access.

Today is Easter Sunday 2010. Fifty-two years have passed since that picture was taken. I am still here on this earth, now living in the Pacific Northwest with Smart Guy. I have a routine that takes me through my days, and I look forward with optimism to the future. But now I am old, and although I am still fit enough to hike in the mountains with my friends, the operative word there is "still." Once you get to a certain age, you know it's a blessing to STILL be able to do these things, but the body breaks down, little by little.

And so does the soul, unless it is watered with grace. I woke this morning not feeling the happiness I usually feel, but feeling the loss of so much that matters to me. My parents, children, many of my dear friends, my youth -- they are all gone forever. I feel the weight of the years I carry around with me now. That child in the picture, with her whole life ahead of her, that was me then. The me of today no longer wonders what her life will be like, because most of it is behind me.

So much of my life I have sought for solace through temporal things that don't last. On my journey I have studied many different religions, joined some, but now I don't attend any church regularly. I tried a few here in Bellingham after moving here, but none has yet moved me to join. I just now wondered what Easter was like in my early journals, picked up one and found an entry from April 2nd, 1983, while I was on retreat at the St. Walburga convent in Boulder:

Now I want to offer thanks. I was given answers to all the questions I have been asking since I got here. Father Von Zeller, the priest here at the Convent, has written a book, "The Trodden Road," which was mentioned to me by a woman who was here last year and appeared again today. She mentioned this wonderful little book and just before I sat down to meditate, I picked up the copy that Father gave me a while ago. He said just to take one -- the chapter called "Love of God Makes Us Self-Forgetting" is where I opened it and began to read.

"The addiction to perfection trap is shown yet again: It is the souls who are trying desperately to run along the way to sanctity that are tripping over themselves. They hate themselves, encountering self hate every turn, but have not reached the degree of detachment which rises above self-hatred and the desire to make an impression on others."

"What do other people's reactions matter anyway? We are not what we are in the minds of others but what we are in the mind of God. It is a pretty poor sort of existence which lives only in another person's imagination. It is to become a ghost, a character in fiction. Either to strike attitudes for other people's benefit or to belittle ourselves from a false concept of humility is to offend against the truth. It is to live in front of a mirror, and distorted reflections only cause trouble in the end. Vanity has to be punished somehow."

I wrote down those words 27 years ago. I am still working on recognizing God's love in my life, and I suspect that it will not be until I have passed through the Valley that I will truly know the extent of it. But today, Easter Sunday 2010, I am still here, grateful for the birds I see outside my window that visit me, the friends I have made in my life here, and the friends I have made on line. And my sleeping partner next to me while I write in here, I am so grateful.

Every Easter is an opportunity to be thankful that this life is not all we will ever know. As surely as the summer follows the springtime, those buried buds of longing will one day bear fruit. My soul is being watered by grace, still today. I wish all of my loved ones blessings on this day, and all the days that follow.