(transformation)

The season of Easter is upon us. Or at least, it's upon me and other practicing Christians. The few and the stubborn. Easter is actually a season guys, who knew! So while Easter Sunday happens for just a day, the season of Easter lasts several weeks and celebrates the time J.C. spent walking around after the resurrection before he ascended into heaven.


I can't speak much to the historicity of this event and I'm not about to get into the various scholarly approaches regarding Christ's rising from the dead ... not because I can't (clearly!), but because it doesn't interest me. Seriously--I've gone down that road and it's confusing, there's very little fact to go off of (not that I'm so stuck in modernity that I need scientific facts to believe something, but come on ... undead Christ?), and ultimately the significance of the resurrection does not lie in whether or not it can be proven. Sounds blasphemous I know, but it's about time I told you (spoiler alert!): I'm a flaming progressive.


In all seriousness, the resurrection means a lot to me. Like any still-faithful Catholic, Jesus' rising from the dead is the basis of my belief in Christianity and the ground of the meaning of life, the universe and pretty much everything. In my limited experience on this planet with those who've trickled into my precious life, the message of the resurrection resonates as a deep, deep truth. Not the undead, zombie Christ message--that's just creepy. The message: Death is not the last word.


According to modern theories of cosmic evolution, in the beginning of the universe there was matter and antimatter, which annihilated each other and created light. From the death of elementary particles came the primordial energy from whence all life arose. Death leading to new life is also exemplified in nature. Think about the cycle of the seasons: from fallen leaves in autumn to the frozen ground and dormant trees in winter, all serve as the fecundation period for the bright mosses and budding cherry blossoms of spring. The most prominent analogy is probably the life cycle of the caterpillar, which closes up into its cocoon and melts down into life-matter as it transforms into its butterfly self, completely different from the plump insect it once was.


I find that in the life of my relationships death is rarely the last word . The people I grew up with fade away as time and distance tumble onward, acquaintances and dear friends constantly swirl into and out of my realm of awareness as their own lives carry them on their journeys. Even those relationships that end in actual death leave a near-tangible space that remains, and I am transformed as much by the departure as I'd been by the presence. I once read that although people die, our relationships with them do not. How does a seemingly one-way relationship between a fleshy, living person and someone who has passed away continue on? In memory only?


In his book Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes, William Bridges describes the life cycle in a somewhat counter intuitive manner. Bridges suggests that rather than birth-life-death, the patterns of our lives appear to follow the course of ending-neutral zone-new beginning, or death-life-birth. The question is no longer which came first: the chicken or the egg; the question becomes: what goes on after the chicken? I can refine this analogy even further and posit that the event of the egg is in essence the neutral zone/life that happens after the ending/death that is the laying of the egg, and before the new beginning/birth that is the baby chick--or breakfast, whichever. And Easter is truly about this pattern that Bridges describes. It is the resurrection that shows us that the ending is truly the beginning of new life and that this cycle repeats itself throughout the evolution of the universe and the history of the earth and our lived experiences.


The challenging piece is accepting that the "neutral zone" between endings and new beginnings makes up the large bulk of our lives. Very rarely am I living in constant joy or constant despair, what St. Ignatius refers to as times of consolation or desolation, respectively. For the most part, life happens in the murky in-between times, when what has ended continues to ripple through our lives as a fading echo and when what is coming is yet mirage-like in the distance. In this space of processing and waiting, we grow.


Liturgically speaking, Lent is like this neutral zone in which we take time out to reflect on our values, relationships, motives and longings as we prepare for renewed life at Easter. Microcosmically, the entire movement happens at Easter with Good Friday (death), Holy Saturday (neutral zone) and Easter Sunday (new beginning). On a larger scale I find that death and life invariably accompany each other. It is no wonder the phrase so often heard is "life and death," as if life always came before death. Easter reminds me that all life springs forth from death, hence Lent begins with the ashes of last year's palms and the benediction to Remember, man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return. Between dusts life transforms us.


RESOURCES:


William Bridges, Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2004)