I’m always grateful when Easter comes, and not just because it marks the end of Lent and the beginning of the most important season of the Christian tradition. For me, Easter brings with it a much-needed call to rise and begin again.
I have a tendency to get entombed in winter. The short, bleak days and long, often stormy, nights can weigh me down. I become a little ragged around the edges. My self-care gets neglected and I catch the latest bugs that are going around -- and around, and around. I forget to engage with practices that sustain me -- meditation, prayer, writing, moving. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, life can go a little grey, a little walled up.
Around February or early March, it all just seems too much. I start to wonder if the sun will ever return. And, really, I think, what’s the point if it does? I’m exhausted from winter, worn out, and crabby. My soul feels dusty. A sense of overwhelm sets in, too. “I’ve neglected so much,” I think, “I haven’t kept up my meditation practice. I haven’t written anything in weeks. My friends probably think I’ve entered Witness Protection. Maybe I just shouldn’t bother.”
Then, suddenly, it’s Easter -- and I find myself called to rise and begin again. The season’s themes of dying and rebirth, entering into darkness and being surprised by the light, sadness followed by great joy -- they all conspire to bring me out of my funk.
Each year, I’m surprised by how much I need Easter to come. I require that seasonal reminder that life is always providing me with opportunities to begin again. I tend to get a little stuck on all the “nots” and “havent’s” -- I’m not writing; I haven’t kept up my meditation practice; I haven’t gone for a good long walk in several days; I’m not getting out and about as much as I’d like. There’s an old saying that if you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When I'm in winter mode, everything looks like failure.
This is, of course, not true -- and, thankfully so. I’m always invited to begin again -- I just need to remember that invitation. A week without writing can be easily remedied by a half hour at the keyboard one morning before I start my day. I can start again blocking out an hour in my calendar every day for some kind of exercise. A few emails or texts can arrange a coffee or two with friends. These are not monumental tasks; they only look Herculean to my crabby pre-Easter winter mind.
It’s also true that I don’t have to wait until Easter to rise and begin again. Easter is not just one long weekend out of the year -- or even a 50-day season that ends with Pentecost. We are an Easter people and the opportunity to be reborn, to start over, is always available to us. And, of course, this is not something solely the purview of the Christian tradition. One look at nature, the lives of others around us, and even the dying of stars that gives birth to new ones -- they all follow this same pattern of letting go, rising again, and starting over. It is, quite simply, embedded in creation.
As the rest of this year unfolds, I’m going to try and keep an Easter approach to all that I do. I will rise and begin again. And again. And again. For that is the pattern of life -- and isn’t it wonderful that it is.
Kevin Aschenbrenner is a Victoria-based writer, poet and communications professional. He holds an M.A. in Culture and Spirituality from the Sophia Center at Holy Names University in Oakland, Calif. He blogs at www.dearpopefrancis.ca.
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* This article was published in the print edition of the Times Colonist on Saturday, April 9 2016
