I was thinking about boycotting Easter this year. I'm really into the solemnness and suffering of Holy Week... I'd kind of like to stay here for a little while. I'm not ready for a resurrection... for butterflies, white lilies and hallelujahs. In a odd-not-really-making-sense kind of way I am finding comfort in the discomfort found in the grief, violence and uncertainty of Jesus last days and of his death.
As I've alluded to in past postings... I've never really been one to stay patiently with difficult feelings. In fact, I have become quite the expert at avoidance. I've drunk, smoked and eaten them away... I've immersed myself in endless hours of mindless television, online games and obsessively checking my Facebook updates... all as way to avoid those difficult feelings. Over the years I have definitely had times in which I have had a much healthier, life-giving approach to suffering but it feels like those times have been more the exception than the norm.
My first impulses upon returning to Canada were to find some way to make myself feel better. I just wanted to feel "normal" again. Everything in my home... my community... my life felt (and still does feel) so different. All of the grief, frustration, anger that were growing in me while in Nicaragua came to full fruition upon arrival in Canada. I felt like a fish out of water... floundering. I am so so so grateful to everyone who has been part of my reintegration. I do, in fact, feel better. Not the its-really-not-that-bad-I-just-need-to-get-over-it kind of better but the it-really-is-that-bad-and-aren't-I-grateful-to-have-the-love-understanding-and-support-of-community kind of better. The many hugs, lunches, walks and coffee dates have made a HUGE difference. Also, I have attended 3 worship services at McClure this week. Just seeing that amazing community together... in prayer... has allowed my heart to heal. I experienced love... and with love I experience hope. I experience deep deep gratitude.
Don't get me wrong.. none of this means that I am ready to let go of the sadness I feel at the injustices that exist in our world. I still feel grief, frustration and anger. But somehow those feelings are easier to sit with when they are held together by love and hope.
Kind of like Holy week! For me, this year, the purpose of Holy Week is not to "get through" to the good news of resurrection. Holy Week is just what it is.... full of loss, violence and the presence of human greed, selfishness and fear... all of which are held together by the love of God and the hope that there is something more at work here than I can even begin to understand.
And besides... the resurrection does not represent the end of suffering. In fact, for those who loved Jesus it was the beginning of a new kind of suffering as they tried to figure out how they were supposed to live into their new reality. This person who they loved... who had had such a profound impact on their lives... had been tortured and murdered. One does not just "get over" that. They were grieving the loss... they were terrified that they might be next. The reality of Christ's death... and resurrection... was something they needed to live in to.
A friend reminded me this week that we are supposed to be an Easter people... the hope of resurrection is not just for Easter Sunday... it's for every day. I don't need to somehow quickly make it through my suffering so that I can be sunshine and smiles for Easter morning. Thank God!
Suffering is part of life.
Hope is part of life.
In order for me to fully engage with life I need to be open to each of these and recognize that they are not mutually exclusive ways of understanding the world. I am realizing that I can't, in fact, have one fully without engaging with the other.
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