Today it is Easter.

It has been a whole month of springtime since I last blogged. Easter has come and gone, and this year it felt right.  Its rightness, may very well have tumbled out of my pressing necessity for rebirth in this particular season of my life.  And quenching necessities of the spirit, for better or for worse, add miles of gratitude to our very temporary and immediate outlooks. 

So, while Easter's calendar date is off of our world's radar for the time being, I'd like to write about it because I continue to feel it.  And yes, I know that as Christians, Easter really is the whole point of, well, everything, so resurrection is something we should practice everyday, like Wendell Berry says. But it just seems that the more I try, the more I wear these caked-on patterns of thought until something too sporadic and too beautiful for me to contain overwhelms me.  I know I've spoken about this before. Usually it's community or prayer or bits of Scripture, perfect simplicity,  sweet melodies or laughter that make the sanctity of this Resurrection real to me.  You know, the sacred things that the monks write about and are sacred for good reason. But sometimes, on a more non-conventional note, the things that clear the mud from my eyes, are the springtime wildflowers. 

This spring, I have become well acquainted with the stretch of Highway 6 between Waco and Bryan/College Station.  My Aunt and Uncle live on a ranch just outside of Bryan, and I had been before, but it has seemed more beautiful than ever these past couple of months.  Either Texas is growing on me or I just wasn't looking carefully enough before, I'm not sure which. Regardless, when I go to see them, I might as well have driven down Highway 6 with my hazards on; slowing down, speeding up, looking to the right and to the left, even pulling over on the shoulder to run through the fields for just a minute because how could one not? Yesterday, I got to drive home from Houston on this sacred stretch of highway with someone who was first my roommate, but now, has become a dear friend.  We had been separated for the past four months while she was off on an adventure, and I deeply missed her and also her company, care and the way she would do things for me, like leave the light on.  

We drove yesterday in an off-and-on kind of silence, and I think I speak for both of us when I say that we were filled with reconnecting, prayer-like songs on the radio and, of course, the bluebonnets.  And in this perfect and peaceful space between what feels like the end of an ending and the beginning of a beginning, I felt words like Hallelujah from the inside out. And in this very subtle way, Hope, and all of its attachments- goodness and mercy and lovingkindness are truer than they were yesterday. Resurrection has been practiced effortlessly because today it is Easter, and tomorrow will be too, and it satisfies.