A sacred weekend

I am trying to clear my desk before a sacred weekend. Earth Day and Good Friday coincide this year, and we will celebrate Easter with two baptisms in the family. That’s a lot of holy time, with emotional pulls in many directions. Plus cooking.

Right now six men are tromping up and down stairs, drilling holes in the attic, and blowing in an extra batch of insulation so it’s extra hard to complete my tasks. I’ll just give up and muse for a bit.

I want to make an Earth Day reading recommendation. Read here what I have to say about my friend Sandra Steingraber’s latest book, Raising Elijah: Protecting Our Children in an Age of Environmental Crisis. Okay I’ll tell you what I say. “This is a very funny book about hair-raisingly serious topics.” Read the book to identify with a mom who knows way too much about a poisonous world, who does all she can but doesn’t want to be a HEPA filter. Read it to find out how heroic it is to mow your lawn with a push mower or dry your clothes on the line.

(I gaze with some satisfaction at two racks of laundry crowding my study. Sun is shining today for a change so maybe I’ll just fold those dry clothes right now, take the racks outside, and put a load of sheets on them. Real April smell, no chemical fragrances needed.)

Jesus was put in the Earth, entombed in the obdurate stone. Death is essential. Nothing, however, is unchanging. Even the great plates of the Earth groan and tremble and shift. Humans build as if we will last forever and at the same time we create permanent poisons, no-trespass zones that will last tens of thousands of years.

Easter brings a happy ending but it is not an easy one. The message of the resurrection is a fierce challenge to be life, to bring life, to serve life and reject the forces of hatred, poison, and destruction.

May everything we do this sacred weekend, whether it is picking up trash on the roadway, hiding Easter eggs, or dipping in glorious ritual in a cold lake, honor the Spirit who breathes life.