Easter thoughts

Easter Season April 2 2010


Lent. A time to give up,

Opening hands and heart,

Setting the old afloat

On spring’s fresh currents--

Wafted blessings.

I spent Lent sorting, packing,

Preparing for a move,

A new start, a new house,

A new chapter in my life,

A new love –

Emptying the old to welcome in the new,

Room by room, drawer by drawer,

Loosening the bonds of memory

Intertwined with fabric, wood, and objects from the past.

Setting free my spirit to step with joy into the new.



Holy Week, I moved.

Half the stuff I used to have,

Packed now into boxes,

Dislocated, shifted, invisible,

Baldly shorn, minus all attachments.

For a whole day, ten people toiled to load, to drive,

To unload all within a new space

Anonymous objects, jumbled into cardboard cubes,

Arduous, wearing, endless- seeming load to carry

On aching, sweating backs and shoulders.

A life is heavy, both with feeling and with bulk.

At day’s end, a new house is piled high in every room and corner –

There’s no way yet to live in it; inhabitation must be patient – wait.

Deep emptiness pervades the house vacated.

Spirit and joy have left the one, and not yet emerged into the other.

Love is on hiatus, lost within the swirling energies of motion and transition.



I waken to a new view – lovely trees welcome me to my new yard and neighborhood.

I survey the good things and the bad – the things that work within this house,

And the things that must change quickly in pursuit of comfort, beauty, function.

Many blessings promise hope –the love of groups of friends assembling here,

The hope of space just the right size for one,

The discovery of new communities.



Over this Lenten time, I have lived, loved, lost, given up, received back many-fold,

And am now ready for the joyous gaiety of Easter,

The return of love and peace and order--

Life blessing of a higher order,

Inspiring progress toward the peace of God,

The bliss of resurrection,

New life, new beginnings.