A year ago, I had the joy and privilege of celebrating Greek Easter on the Island of Milos. A traditional game played at this time is tsougrisma. Each person holds a red egg in their hand, and taps it against another's red egg. The person who has the stronger egg, the one that does not crack, goes on to test their egg against others. While you are cracking the eggs, one person says, "Christos Anesti" (Christ has risen!), while the other person says, "Alithos Anesti" (Indeed he has risen!), symbolizing Christ’s emergence from the tomb. Somehow, I emerged with the intact egg after much laughter and egg bashing. I believe this was supposed to entitle me to an especially lucky year. Hmm. Be careful what you wish for? Luck can take many forms.
I have been looking back at this extraordinary difficult year, and trying to make some meaning of it. I am finding that meaning in the word RESURRECTION. What lies behind the Easter bunnies and the colored eggs? Death. Death precedes resurrection. The silence of the tomb.
I do not write this in sadness, but in the spirit of rebirth. I live in a culture that seems to insist that "lucky" is how we should always be, and luck means love, health, success, and even an abundance of "stuff." We live as if there was something wrong if we were not always in full bloom, at the peak of harvest, or rising to new heights. This is not the lesson nature teaches us.
Nature is wise in cycles. We expand and contract. Ebb and flow. Wakefulness requires sleep. Spring is not possible without the fallow time of winter. Why would we, as humans, be exempt from these cycles? We are not!
I have been lucky this year. I have been lucky because I have done a lot of dying. I have let go of things that were stuck deep inside. I have begun to heal places I did not know needed healing. This would not have been possible if I did not spend some time underground. As I celebrate Easter this year, it is with a lighter heart, and if my heart is light it is not because of the news I read in the New York Times. My heart is light because I am beginning to make my peace with the whole cycle of life, even the dark places, the small deaths which are essential to our larger life.
Today, Easter Sunday, the sky has been gray all day. It doesn't matter. I am carrying my own weather. My innerscape is not dependent on the external weather. I sense a resurrection coming. Rebirth. A new cycle. I do not know what is being birthed, but I trust this new beginning. Cristos Anesti!
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