Easter 2018

Lovely sunrise

This morning I woke to see if perhaps there would be an Easter sunrise like this one, but it's cloudy and there is not likely to be sunrise service anywhere near us. The sun rises at 6:48am and I'll be looking (that's about an hour from now). I've attended a couple of sunrise services in Colorado, but I've never gotten involved with a congregation since we moved here ten years ago.

Many years ago, when I worked at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, I would take a personal retreat at a nearby convent, the Convent of St. Walburga, during Holy Week. The Benedictine contemplative nuns allowed a small number of women to spend four days there during that time. I don't know how I heard about the convent, because I wasn't involved in a church community at the time, but somehow I found that much-needed experience to allow myself to have nothing to do but pray and contemplate the direction of my life for four whole days. I would get very frazzled and needed someplace to go where I wouldn't hear a phone or be available for work at all. The convent fit the bill perfectly.

I arrived on Wednesday afternoon and settled into the small retreat cabin that I was assigned for the next few days. At first it was strange to have absolutely nothing I had to do and maintain silence, as the nuns did. We retreatants gathered three times a day for meals in a small room off the kitchen. Each of us (I think there were maybe eight or ten) had her own place setting and we would be served by the nuns. We didn't see where the nuns ate, and the only time I was allowed to see them at all was when they went to chapel to sing the liturgical offices, seven times a day (I think).

It was a very small community, and I enjoyed the complete difference from my regular life during that time. On Thursday, the nuns washed the feet of the retreatants, a very profoundly moving service. On Good Friday, the nuns began their withdrawal into prayer, which continued during Saturday as well. And then on Sunday morning, everything was joyful, and I found a small Easter basket outside the door of my cabin, filled with eggs and homemade cookies, a real delight. It's the only Easter basket during my life that I remember with such happiness.

For the following three or four years, I enjoyed the same Easter retreat with the nuns, but then life changed, and the convent stopped providing the service and I had only the wonderful memories of that time in my life. For a brief period, I toyed with the idea of spending every day like the nuns, but I realized that it was not for me. The whole idea of taking a vow of obedience and the rigidity of one's days from sunrise to sunset was enough to deter me. I wouldn't have lasted very long.

Nevertheless, it is a favorite Easter memory from long ago. Today I spend my Sundays taking a day off from my usual exercise, and this Easter I will follow my habitual routine by going off to the coffee shop to join my friends there, and then I'll return home to spend some time transferring the flowers I bought yesterday into pots on the front porch. If the weather allows and it's not raining too much, I'll also start the process of preparing my garden area for planting.

I am reading a very good book by one of my blogging friends, Dee, about her time as a Benedictine nun. She spent more than eight years in a Benedictine convent similar to the one I knew. She recalls in this memoir her life during that time, and it resonates with me. The book is called "Prayer Wasn't Enough" and is available in both electronic and hard copy. I have it on my Kindle and will probably finish it today after I spend some time getting my hands in the dirt. Her book gives me the ability to imagine how I would have fared in that environment.

Today I am as far from that world as I am from my skydiving years. I was an active skydiver for twenty-five years, and it amazes me that it has faded from my consciousness as much as it has. I still follow all the exploits of my still-skydiving friends on Facebook with pleasure and find enjoyment in their achievements. But the strange thing is that looking back, it's with the same detachment that I feel from any need to have a life of prayer and retreat from the outside world.

I keep thinking about that quote from Madeleine L'Engle I left you with last week: "The great thing about getting older is that you don't lose all the other ages you've been." Although I may not lose all those other ages, do I lose all the other lives I've lived? These days they seem no more solid than a dream. Perhaps that's the way it is for everybody, but how can I know?

The interesting thing is how one morphs from one life to another. One day I am a third-grader playing with crayons and learning to spell, and the next I am an old woman sitting in her bed with a laptop, tapping away at the keys and thinking about what the day will bring. And all the lives in between blend together to become the person I am right now, at this instant in time.

And now it's getting to be time for me to wrap this up and start the rest of my Easter Sunday. Tea is gone, partner is sleeping, and I found this quote from Dr. Seuss that will give us something to think about for the coming week:

How did it get so late so soon? It's night before it's afternoon. December is here before it's June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?

Ah, yes, that sums it up nicely. I hope your Easter Sunday is a good one, and that you will not forget all the worlds that encompass your past and future days. Be well until we meet again next week.