It’s been a
long winter, and this week’s snow was a less-than-welcome sign that spring
hasn’t yet pushed Old Man Winter out of the way. Thanks to our granddaughter,
the lovely Madelyn Simone, I’ve seen the Frozen movie quite a few times, and as
I scraped the ice off the windshield on Wednesday morning, I wondered if Elsa’s
spell on Arendelle had extended its icy fingers to Ashland.
I’m
disappointed I’ll be out of town on May 23 when the Downtown Walk-In Movie
presents the sing-a-long version of Frozen, with the snowflake bouncing above
the words. But maybe we’ll be able to watch Elsa, Anna and Olaf at the Kroc
Center’s Movie Under the Stars on July 12th. I guarantee it – there
won’t be any snow on that date.
While Elsa
claimed that the cold never bothered her anyway, I for one am more than ready
for spring to come to stay, not to flirt with us for a few days and then play
hide and seek. With John Denver, I’m ready to open up my ears, “and hear the
breezes say, everything that’s cold and gray has gone.”
Maybe spring
has been so late in its arrival because it’s been waiting for Easter. Last year
Easter was on March 31, a bit sooner on the calendar, and in 2016, it will be
as early as March 27. I’m afraid we may be wearing winter coats with our Easter
bonnets that year.
I had to research
why the date changes and how it is selected, and I discovered that the Council
of Nicea (which met in 325 A.D.), set the date of Easter as the Sunday
following the paschal full moon, which is the full moon that falls on or after
the vernal (spring) equinox. Wouldn’t it have been easier if they had chosen the third Sunday in April instead? Of
course, had they done that, Easter could have conflicted with the great USA Tax
Day on the 15th of April. (That is another column, hopefully after a
successful intervention by Procrastinators Anonymous prior to April 15, 2015.)
As much as
we greet Easter as the ultimate sign of spring, those who follow a prophet from
Galilee hold the days of Holy Week as the most significant in the calendar of
faith. As such they also recognize the conflicting emotions experienced by
believers during Holy Week and Resurrection Sunday, with its desperate sorrow
and overwhelming joy. As the faithful gather in various expressions of worship
during these days, those emotions are awakened by the songs of the passion of
Christ, by the celebration of the sacrament of communion, and by the remembrance
of the events of Jerusalem and Golgotha. As First United Methodist’s pastor
Michael Namy reminded those gathered in worship on Maundy Thursday, Christians
are powerfully shaped by the events of Holy Week as we “allow space in our
souls in the present to be stirred by the Spirit of God.”
The liturgy
and music of Holy Week help to draw us into that space. Many years ago, Larry
and I attended a Tenebrae Service on Good Friday night. Known as a service of
shadows, that particular evening ended as the light was extinguished and nails
were pounded into a cross. We walked out in silence, into a world waiting in an
in-between time. Jerusalem Jackson Greer describes it like this: “On Holy
Saturday I do my best to live in that place, that wax-crayon place of trust and
waiting. Of accepting what I cannot know. Of mourning what needs to be mourned.
Of accepting what needs to be accepted. Of hoping for what seems impossible.”
We allow
space in our souls for the holy through silence, through ritual, through
liturgy, and through community. Perhaps in these hours of Holy Saturday and
Easter Sunday, before we dig into the marshmallow peeps and chocolate bunnies,
we can allow the space in our souls to be stirred once again by the promise of
faith and the gift of new life.
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