Dear Friends,

 Easter, as always, brings to mind the central mystery of Christian faith - the resurrection - the improbable surprise upon the heels of the deepest despair and hopelessness experienced in crucifixion and the lifelessness of death.  But resurrection isn't only something that happened a long time ago - it happens now all the time in many ways we don't even recognize.  It doesn't deliver us from the turmoil and fragmentation of human life, but is found in the ordinary round and routine of our lives.  Many times, perhaps, it's only recognizable after the fact - that we have somehow been raised into newness of life by God's Eternal Word.

 Here are some possible examples:  An artist, at first only painfully aware of emptiness and impotence, finds her imagination gradually stirred to life and discovers a vision which takes control of her and which she feels not only able but compelled to express.  Might that not be resurrection?  Or a scholar or scientist as he pursues his research finds a favorite theory breaking up in his hands.  He's left with no home in which to house the quantities of evidence he's collected.  Then a new and more adequate theory gradually takes place in his mind which makes him more at home with his material even than he was before.  Might that not be resurrection?  Or a married couple find their relationship, once rich and fulfilling, slowly drying up into no more than an external observance, to the point where it seemed impossible that these bones should ever live again.  Then a new relationship emerges to bring new life to this relationship on life support, less superficially high-powered and less greedy than the old one, but deeper, more stable, more satisfying, with a new quality of life which is inexhaustible because it doesn't depend on the constant recharging of emotional batteries.  Might that not be resurrection?
 
 The possibilities are as endless as eternity - and embody life beyond life as well.  But, at heart, resurrection is always a miracle.  It's always the creative act of the Eternal Word.  Because that Word is spoken now in the present in terms of what we call the common circumstances of life, there can be few I suppose who at some time or another have not been raised from the dead.  But more often than not our eyes are scaled over and we do not know it.  We don't always recognize resurrection when it comes to us.   Its presence is unnoticed, and evidenced only in the new life made available; just as at the wedding in Cana of Galilee the guests enjoyed the good wine but did not know its source.  (With grateful acknowledgment to H. A. Williams, True Resurrection, 1972)

 May we all have a blessed and life renewing Easter.

Peace,
Brett