| Finish It is a difficult story to end when the end is not an end but a closing that opens a big door where the big stopper used to be jammed in and the something is really nothing or rather the nothing that is not there is what is the something that even though you didn’t know it can not name it still is the it the I the living you have been wanting ~ Cynthia Briggs Kittredge |
Dear Friends, Dear Friends, On the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and Mary went to the tomb. They went to attend to death—to feel its weight, to sit with it, to face what was left behind (themselves included). Sometimes, in such moments, that is nearly all we can muster: to sit, to face the thing, and to feel it. Maybe. In that moment of despair and hopelessness, new life appeared in the place of death. I still don’t understand how, and neither do you. But what I do know is in my bones—everything I believe and hope for depends on the promise of new, full, and lasting life. Those faithful women—attentive, alert, painfully aware—became the first witnesses and preachers of the something that was there in place of the nothing they expected to find. Jesus, very much alive to a degree and quality they had never before seen, sent them out to tell the others with a promise: They will see me. As we draw near to the days of Holy Week and look more intently for Easter light, I am praying for us to be filled with this hope—enough that we might live like it’s true. We can stir up this hope in walking together. And we can join Mary Magdalene and Mary in their ministry, telling others about the possibility of new light and new life in the darkest places of despair. Christ is risen indeed. Scott + The Rev. R. Scott Painter, Rector |
