Resurrection

This is undoubtedly the first Easter in my life that I will not spend in a church of walls. I thought it would feel uncomfortable, empty, unfamiliar. But I feel set free. Free to meet the One Who is More in ways more creative and meaningful to me. As my dear friend so eloquently says, "Resurrection isn't only about dead Jesus." Even though sermons may try to make us see the connection between dead Jesus and our own resurrections, I think I need to let go of the attachment to The Resurrection to see it. Of course since I work at a church, and created three bulletins for Holy Week and read about Jesus in the Garden at the Maundy Thursday service, it's been a little hard to get away from dead Jesus. But today I am letting it go and looking for a different relationship with resurrection.

My childhood Easters were what all childhood Easters are: bunnies, colored eggs, and a new outfit for church. In my youngest years the new outfit may have included a straw hat and patent leather Mary Janes. Later there were corsages from my daddy to his "four fabulous females." One memorable outfit in my middle childhood years was a two-piece sailor-type affair made of bonded knit. (Whoever thought that fabric was a good idea?) And there was the pink mohair sweater. I was a goddess. I bought a new ensemble a couple weeks ago. I'm calling it my resurrection outfit; since Easter implies church. And, did I mention, I'm not going.

Today is daughter Emma's birthday. Her birth was due on Easter Sunday, but she was four days late. According to a Google search, 2011 is the first of only two times between 1875 and 2124 that her birthday will fall on Easter. (The next time she will be 101.) That was a happy Easter, anticipating her birth. Happy Birthday, Emma. Another was the Easter Sunday my family moved from Starkville, Mississippi. After church. Now that was resurrection.

Unlike birth, re-birth implies a prior death. We all experience mini-deaths on a regular basis. Hopefully we don't stay dead, but sometimes resurrection takes longer than other times. Relationship death may be the hardest to come back from. Just when we think we are there, we have to die again. But each time we work through it, we come back a little bit more alive; a little bit more ourselves. In the garden yesterday I finally cut out the garbage shrub that has been the huge gardenia's dance partner for, no doubt, decades. They were co-existing, and had even grown to look a bit alike; but the trash shrub grew faster and I had to keep trimming it back to size. The gardenia bloomed, but wasn't reaching her full potential because she gave some of her power to her partner. It was time for it to go. Its absence leaves a hole in the gardenia, but eventually she will fill it with more of herself. And I didn't get all the shrub, so as not to leave too big a hole all at once. (I am not even going to fill out that metaphor; I'm sure, anyone who has ever experienced death of a relationship knows exactly what it is.) Pruning is necessary in the garden, and in life. Emotions, expectations, disappointment, attachments to what was and what we thought would be, become overgrown to the point of blocking the way for space to grow something new.

Yesterday my too-young-to-be-a-great-grandmother neighbor complimented me on my patio. She says she thinks I can do just about anything. Then she amends it to she thinks women can do just about anything they set their sights on. I say I agree, and that too often we give our power away when there is a man about. (I don't say it, but there are women we give our power to as well.) She says "And they are happy to take it." The secret is not to avoid relationship, but to hang on to our power.

I have been attached to my garden coming into the fullness of its potential. Some sort of wildlife is attached to breakfast in my garden. I have declared war on bunnies at Easter. Now a friend suggests a deer. I am not convinced a deer is negotiating the street, but my friend is right...it's a lot of munching for rabbits, and when the peony provided the meal the other night, I admit to having to look at taller possibilities than the Easter Bunny. I am relating to my mother's ongoing war with deer. Over the years her garden has been more a shrine to deer repellent techniques than to anything else. I may have to learn to go of that attachment to what I want. But not just yet.

Just like the biblical women didn't expect an empty tomb and a re-born Jesus, there are things (besides four-legged diners) in my garden that I didn't expect. The peony I rescued from English ivy a couple years ago has many buds on it for the first time. (Though not as many as it had two days ago--see above.) I planted two alum bulbs last fall and forgot about them. When something came up with what looked more like an after-blossom seed pod than a bud, I couldn't figure out what it was and how I missed the bloom. Until it started to crack open, and then I knew. By the end of this day of resurrection I expect it will be fully open. I thought the sixth rose I planted was a dud; but it is just a bit slower than the others. All in its own time. Things that look like they won’t be coming back, have a way of showing up when you least expect it.

After months of dreading my office change, I have been occupying new space for the past week. Space with a window. Light. Returns to my basement office feel like revisiting my personal Auschwitz. How did I bear for all these years? Not very well, actually; but there was the knowledge that it was mine, and it was familiar if not beloved. New and unknown places are hard to anticipate. But change is often the opening resurrection needs. And when we jump into the crack, we open ourselves to possibilities.

"And time remembered is grief forgotten/And frosts are slain and flowers begotten/
And in green underwood and cover/
Blossom by blossom the spring begins." --Swinburne





If you're looking for me, I'm in the garden.