Rebirth, redemption & renewal †

The calendar convergences just keep coming this year.. Easter is observed in the West on the first Sunday following the first full moon as of the Equinox & can fall anywhere from 22 March to 25 April. In the rare years it does land in March, it’s typically not this early. Since Easter then dictates Palm Sunday & Good Friday, it’s been back to back celebrations for over a week now. Starting with Palm Sunday a week ago & St. Patrick’s Day the day after, right through the Equinox with its “equal night” & Good Friday with its full moon the next day into night to Easter itself; this has been a week rich with history & potentially conflicting traditions.

It’s certainly not coincidental that Easter occurs as of Spring since it embodies rebirth in both its proposed history & its overall intent. An ancient word for spring is “eastre” so it’s a partnership that predates its (relatively) modern significance. Many find the timing of the Christian miracle being celebrated today a bit too convenient but it’s more likely that God simply timed it that way. Aside from crosses & empty tomb references, rabbits, eggs & Lilies are equally prevalent today. The many reasons for their mutual appearance are far-reaching in time & meaning. Various histories even help tie unlikely elements together:

An Anglo-Saxon legend tells how the Saxon goddess Eostre found a wounded bird and transformed it into a hare, so that it could survive the Winter. The hare found it could lay eggs, so it decorated these each Spring and left them as offering to the goddess.

There’s a common context linking myriad beliefs through these shared symbols. Whatever their individual connotations have become societally or personally, they connect to renewal throughout history. For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, the world is tangibly coming back to life all around us. As we watch the old, dying & seemingly dead made new again, it’s human nature to want to take part. Not as readily designed for redemption, we may have to get creative in the process. Whether applying the tradition of spring cleaning within by seeking to rid our dank corners of the hidden agendas & fears that took refuge in Winter or hoping to start fresh with the hopes & desires that have been awaiting the sun’s nourishment, we need only begin.

The most complicated concern when it comes to self-renewal tends to be how. Seldom do we have to wonder what we’d like for ourselves nor do we typically have any doubt what we’d like to be rid of. We’re usually working on practical goals along these lines, in fact. Then there are those goals that don’t have an obvious course of action as well as intentions that are proving more difficult to honor than expected. It’s the very things without a clearcut approach that may well impact our practical issues, too. In order to move forward, we need to own whatever’s been holding us back. Understanding what has the potential to defeat us or what negativity we’re (hopefully) keeping at bay allows acceptance &, ideally, even the acceptance that we can’t help going through it.

Clearly, the more conscious we can be of thoughts & feelings that could undermine us, the better equipped we are to fight back. However, thought processes tend to be just as inescapable as feelings are unbidden. Rather than fight our own internal workings, leaving us entangled by them, it’s time to embrace them. We can’t work through that which we’re caught up in thus the need to truly own what we’re thinking & feeling. In claiming it as our own, proclaiming our right to go through it & reclaiming the process itself; we begin anew. Some ranting, venting &/or wallowing may will be required along the way but, when we’re done, we really are! Only then can we move on – having once again come to terms with what it is to be human & had our say to boot – either with a clean slate or the know-how to defeat what would otherwise keep defeating us.

(|_|*cheers*|_|)
“To the dim and bewildered vision of humanity, God’s care is more evident in some instances than in others; and upon such instances men seize, and call them providences. It is well that they can; but it would be gloriously better if they could believe that the whole matter is one grand providence.”
~ George Macdonald ~

Tagged as: Easter, holidays, rebirth