Easter Blessing*
God of Rising,
you bring new life
to all the places death inhabits.
Bless our own dying dreams
with your breath of new life.
Make our dry bones dance,
inspire us to sing,
revive our bodies
so that we might become
more vibrant, hopeful witnesses
to the persistence of your love.
We call on Christ’s wisdom
to bless and sustain us
in the practice of resurrection
by which we honor our bodies
and become agents of generous abundance.
May all the nets we draw up
from the water be overflowing with fish,
may our wounds be still visible
as a sign of healing grace,
and may we encounter your presence
when we sit at table with strangers.
Let our lives be a celebration
of all the ways your love thrives
where once there was only doubt,
like the first riot of daffodils in spring.
Dearest dancing monks, artists, and pilgrims,
Lent is a powerful season of transformation. Forty days in the desert, stripped of our comforts, and buoyed by our commitment to daily practice so that we might arrive at the celebration of Easter deepened and renewed. In many ways this Lent was far more austere than any of us anticipated.
Often, we arrive at the glorious season of resurrection and celebrate for that one day, forgetting it is a span of 50 days, even longer than the Lenten season through which we just traveled. Easter is not just the day when the tomb was discovered empty, but a span of time when days grow longer in the northern hemisphere, blossoms burst forth, and we are called to consider how we might practice this resurrection in our daily lives.
The soul’s journey through Lent is like a pilgrimage exploring inner desert places, landscapes, thresholds, and the experience of exile. Ultimately, pilgrimage always leads us back home again with renewed vision. Resurrection is about discovering the home within each one of us, remembering that we are called to be at home in the world, even as we experience ourselves exiled again and again.
The liturgical year, however, is not a linear passage of time. It is cyclical and spiral, returning to previous moments with new vision. It is the heart of kairos time, which is time outside of time. I know many of us are forgetting what day of the week it is because they all run into one another now.
And in this model of time moving in spirals, it means that even though we move into the radiant season of Easter, we do not leave behind the invitations of the desert or the call of grief. To be human means to hold all of these layers together.
As a poet, when I am asked what I write about most often, my response is that for me poetry helps me to be present to a world where terrible things happen and where amazing things happen, sometimes all at once. The grief, the loss, the unknowing, the fear of what is to come, they are all real. The gratitude, the kindness, the caring, the wonder at simple moments, they are all real as well.
The Gospel readings during the Easter season are about the resurrection appearances of Jesus: Thomas doubts and needs to touch Jesus’ wounds; the nets that were empty are pulled ashore overflowing with fish; the disciples on the road to Emmaus recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread; Jesus breathes on them the gift of the Spirit; and of course the celebration of breath and fire at Pentecost when everyone was most afraid of what was to come. In all of these stories, there is a sense of generosity and abundance, of caring for needs, and of finding solace and assurance in the wounds. Perhaps these are just the stories we need for these times.
During these dark days of uncertainty, I have been making room for grief. Music and movement become the container for my sorrow. But I have also been making room for laughter, for affection, for connection with others.
The truth of resurrection isn’t that we hold onto some false banner of hope, denying the reality around us. Resurrected life means we know our woundedness as a place where grace can also enter in.
To help us practice resurrection in our lives, Abbey of the Arts and our wonderful Wisdom Council have created an Easter gift for you: Sanctuary —Midday Prayers for Peace and Justice. We have recorded 28 days of prayers with a short reading and an invitation to sit in silence for 5 minutes in the middle of your day as a way to join with other dancing monks in praying for peace in our fragile and hurting world. These are wonderful additions to our prayer cycles of morning and evening prayer. If you subscribe to the daily emails, each day we will include a link and invite you to pray with us at morning, midday (new!), and evening.
Join Simon and me for our monthly contemplative prayer service tomorrow on the theme of practicing resurrection! We will be joined by musician Soyinka Rahim.
With great and growing love,
Christine
Christine Valters Paintner, OblSB, PhD, REACE
*Blessing is from Christine’s book A Book of Everyday Blessings: 100 Prayers for Dancing Monks, Artists, and Pilgrims (Ave Maria Press)
