Wishing everyone joy and fun and peace for this time of renewal. Whatever holiday you celebrate, or even if you celebrate none, Spring is always a time of anticipation of good things to come as the earth comes to life again and helps us feel a sense of hope.
Hope has been hard to come by in recent weeks for many people, but now is not a time to despair. At least that’s what I keep reminding myself year after year when the world seems to be spinning out of control, and obviously, I’ve been writing to that end for a long time. Recently, I came across this guest editorial I wrote for The Texas Catholic Newspaper in Dallas a year or two before I started my weekly column there back in the 80s. This piece wasn’t dated, so I don’t know when it ran, but it’s obvious from some references that it was “back in the day” as we elders like to say.
While the references, and the woman who wrote it, are dated, the message is still timely, even after so long. I hope you agree. Enjoy!
I made a rather startling discovery about myself this morning as I sat down to write what I hoped would be a very touching, and memorable, piece about Easter, and what I ended up with was a sermon. My husband said he always knew I harbored a secret desire to be a preacher, and I told him that couldn’t be true. After all, good Catholic girls only think about being nuns.
So, I pulled my sermon out of my typewriter and filed it away under “who knows what will happen in the future of the church” and started again. The plan was to find something else to write about, but the thoughts of Easter kept slipping back into my consciousness.
Obviously, I needed my little sermon this morning because in the writing, and the contemplating, I had to face into some truths about myself as a Christian.
For many years, Easter was nothing more to me than something that happened a couple of thousand years ago. An event to be remembered in a momentary and fragmented way. But more recently I’ve started to realize that Easter has to be more than that in my life.
Otherwise, there’s nothing to make my daily dose of the ten o’clock evening news palatable.
Or help me accept the seemingly meaningless death of a friend.
Or bouy me up when I’m faced with one of the numerous inconsistencies between what is right and just in the world and what is really happening in the world.
For me, Easter has to be a promise, and the eternal spring of hope for the future.
That is a nice thought. Perhaps even profound enough to be stitched on fabric and hung on my office wall. But what then? Do I merely leave it there to gather dust and an occasional comment from a visitor? Or do I take a chance and let the thought come to fruition within me?
The prospect of that is a little scary. We live in a very chic and sophisticated society where it isn’t fashionable to stand out and be different. Unless of course, you do it well enough, and to such an extreme, that they can put you in a comfortable little slot, fanatic, and forget about you.
It’s tempting to consider just riding with the waves. Facing into them might only result in my getting wet and what good would it do anyway? What one person does, or does not do, won’t make any difference in the world, will it?
Ah, but I almost forgot.
I was writing about Easter wasn’t I.
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That’s all from me for today. Be hopeful. Be happy. Be safe.
