Easter
8 and 9 Apr 2023
We come with light and with light hearts; we fill our worship space with the glorious perfume of the Easter lily, which of course comes from the greenhouse since it is not exactly lily blooming weather in Iowa. That does not matter. What matters is that Love has come back into the world; the promise is made complete. Now the joy is ours, but also the mission. Listen to what the spirit is saying to God’s people and shout your alleluias!
I have three poems, one old and two from present time; little more needs be said, for it is Easter, it is the Feast of the Resurrection.
Sonnet #68 by Edmund Spenser, late 16th century Most glorious Lord of lyfe, that on this day, ---Didst make thy triumph over death and sin: ---And having harrowd hell, didst bring away ---Captivity thence captive us to win: This joyous day, deare Lord, with joy begin, ---And grant that we for whom thou diddest dye ---Being with thy deare blood clene washt from sin, ---May live for ever in felicity. And that thy love we weighing worthily, ---May likewise love thee for the same againe: ---And for thy sake that all lyke deare didst buy, ---With love may one another entertayne. So let us love, deare love, lyke as we ought, ---Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.
Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything ready-made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die. And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery any more. Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in a little drawer. When they want you to buy something they will call you. When they want you to die for profit they will let you know. So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands. Give your approval to all you cannot understand. Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed. Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest. Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold. Call that profit. Prophesy such returns. Put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years. Listen to carrion — put your ear close, and hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come. Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts. So long as women do not go cheap for power, please women more than men. Ask yourself: Will this satisfy a woman satisfied to bear a child? Will this disturb the sleep of a woman near to giving birth? Go with your love to the fields. Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head in her lap. Swear allegiance to what is nighest your thoughts. As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn’t go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.
+ Wendell Berry
Spring Mary Oliver
Faith is the instructor. We need no other. Guess what I am, he says in his incomparably lovely young-man voice. Because I love the world I think of grass, I think of leaves and the bold sun, I think of the rushes in the black marshes just coming back from under the pure white and now finally melting stubs of snow. Whatever we know or don’t know leads us to say; Teacher, what do you mean? But faith is still there, and silent. Then he who owns the incomparable voice suddenly flows upward and out of the room and I follow, obedient and happy. Of course I am thinking the Lord was once young and will never in fact be old. And who else could this be, who goes off down the green path, carrying his sandals, and singing?
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