Easter has been canceled for 2020

A day of renewal, in renunciation of the Dark, the Light Lord’s return. The old is easily left behind in times such as these. Does it need to be remembered or renewed? The new seems possible in the rebirth of all.

Last Easter I wrote a blog about my childhood holidays, about spirituality, family dinners, earthly ramifications of a returning Spring. All have been put into the polisher together to emerge free from rough edges.

In this year’s blog, the Easter Bunny coughs lightly & dons a mask before putting eggs in the basket. These are seriously different circumstances. The immediate & draconian effects of lockdown on population, the economy, the children…oh & so much else… is unknown.

What at first started as a “holiday” from routine became a forced time-out where our faces are hidden & we’re herded into lines & placed 6’ apart in order to stay alive. Now, with the problem tapering into an annually-returning possibility of death, these measures seem stupidly draconian.

Roseanne Bar says this virus is tailored to wipe out the Baby Boomers. I am one, so I listened up. But I still don’t believe it will take me along on its morbid cross-country path. Even Death would be arrested if he stepped out of line! Undoubtedly, this is a wicked scourge upon the land.

But I see it is as a coalition of fears. I am not sure why we fear death at all – not like you can put luggage racks on the hearse & drive to Bolivia to get away from it, yeh? But fear has compressed & compromised our vulnerability to naked exposures. We need to return to a quality of life unmarred by it.

How many today sit with their bucket lists in hand, mourning? Or adding items frantically till ink runs dry in their pens. My Bucket List is right now: no obligations, no restrictions, no lack in my life.

This present time revises my future. In planning that future so tenderly, I notice the sun shines right through it. It’s a glow of green on the horizon, growing in hope, faith, charity & knowing itself to be the most of these forevermore.

I get subliminals now, a montage of the past- this is what I’ve perceived as the life flashing before my eyes. Rumor has it this happens with dying. Little but love lasts forever.

I have known pirates who thought nothing of walking me to the edges of planks blindfolded & prodded by cutlass tips as though I might continue perambulating lazily on the water below. I look to the side & see Priest Lake in Nashville where I hiked. I do a massage & I’m in every spa room I’ve ever worked, with the northern light deepening to dusk. I walk a trail & am on the boardwalk in Ocean City, dolphins bobbing just beyond the waves.

While fun, it’s quite startling to suddenly plug into the past this way. I’m tasting Ledo’s thin crust Pizza, sitting in a sticky booth. I’m sipping coffee in one of a million diners, the cup thicker than my thumbs & heavy to lift. I buy bagels & devour them on a bench, watching strangers, early for an appointment. I walk North Park with its fireworks displays, I stand in the uniform of theatre usher with a smile. I smell Fisher’s Fries. I see the white bones of an island rising from ocean as I cross a desert bridge.

Where does this memory trip rise from? Are my cellular memories releasing, squeezing out my past to make room? In experiencing these, I am treated to the many places of my life where visions matter. I rub my eyes & look again.