Bishop's Easter Message

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• published: 23 Mar 2016
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Every year as Winter turns into Spring, as the days begin to lengthen and light begins to shine forth more fully in our lives and in our days, I find myself looking out on the perennial gardens in our backyard and noticing the tiny tips of tulip bulbs beginning to poke through and those early crocus that are beginning to come out and just about to flower. It’s a harbinger of Spring, of new life and of new possibilities. E.B. White, author of Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little was married to Katherine White who had the exciting work of writing for seed catalogues in New York. After her death, EB wrote this as a forward to a collection of her writings. He’s talking about the annual event when Katharine, his wife, in October, would begin to prepare the bulbs and place them, to inter them into the ground so that they would spring forth in full flower the following Spring. “Armed with a diagram and a clipboard, Katherine would get into a shabby old Brooks raincoat much too long for her, put on a little round wool hat, pull on a pair of overshoes, and proceed to the director’s chair….There she would sit, hour after hour, in the wind and the weather. As the years went by and age over took her, there was something comical yet touching in her bedraggled appearance on this awesome occasion – the small, hunched over figure, her studied absorption in the implausible notion that there wold be yet another spring, oblivious to the ending of her own days, which she knew perfectly well was near at hand, sitting here with her detailed chart under those dark skies in the dying October, calmly plotting the resurrection.” “The implausible notion that there would be yet another spring.” And “plotting the resurrection.” These are images for us to embrace as we too approach the resurrection - that festival day known as Easter. A time when once again we will shout, “Alleluia, Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen indeed, Alleluia!” It’s a time for us to do our own plotting of resurrection, to ask ourselves, “How are we going to embrace the implausible notion that through death, new life will happen for us?’ How are we going to plot the resurrection in our own lives? How will we know that by dying to self, by dying to old ways, we too can embrace new life and new possibilities. May God bless you in this holy season and may your Easter day be filled with joy. www.eastmich.org www.facebook.com/dioeastmich www.twitter.com/dioeastmich