Reimagining Easter
Sunday Soul Care for April 9, 2023
Happy Easter, everyone, and much love to you in the wide variety of feelings that a day like this can bring to spiritual explorers like us. I hope that are creating a life-giving version of this holiday for yourselves.
If you are navigating complicated thoughts and feelings, and could use some fresh perspective and support, you can still purchase Reimagining Easter through the end of today.
For today’s Easter Sunday Soul Care, I’m sharing the final reflection from Reimagining Easter. I hope you enjoy.
“He is risen!”
“He is risen indeed.”
And with that invocation, Christian worshippers join with millions of other Christians celebrating the resurrection of Christ in the spring.
And we join with the ancient Sumer pagans who celebrated the resurrection of the goddess Innana in spring.
And we join with the ancient Greeks who celebrated Persephone descending into Hades and returning to life in the Spring.
And we join with the ancient Babylonians as they worshiped Adonis who died in the fall and was resurrected in the spring.
And we join with countless other pagan traditions worshiping the resurrection of life every spring.
The idea of resurrection isn’t exclusive to Christianity. We may have trademarked it, but returning to life has been the hope of humanity since the dawn of death. Resurrection is woven into the fabric of our natural world, and we witness it every year.
Magical nature imagery is present in so many biblical stories about Jesus, including ones he told: Walking on water. Fig trees shriveling at a curse. Mountains moving. Rocks crying out in worship. Even if Christianity places Jesus as superior over natural powers, there’s still a connection between the idea of Jesus and the power of nature.
For a religion that asserts, like John 1:3 states, that the entire natural world was created through the divine word and breath of Jesus, we sure are afraid to get in touch with the energetical rhythms of nature.
If you’re like me, you may still get a little twitchy when talking about anything remotely witchy. We were conditioned to fear the supernatural outside of Christianity, and our physiology is proof. Do you have any tension in your muscles, a little squirm in your seat, or an elevated heart rate right now? Are you wondering what your mother would think if she knew you were considering this?
For that, you can thank the missionary efforts of your Christian predecessors who introduced fear of indigenous beliefs and natural practices in order to make converts and keep Christians in line.
As this article describes, the holiday we now call Easter “was established in western Europe by the First Council of Nicea in AD 325, as being the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox, the day from which the hours of sunlight become progressively longer. The equinox had been celebrated as a joyous festival of fertility, regrowth and new birth by early civilisations.”
Missionary efforts commanded by Pope Gregory a few centuries later in 595 directed Augustine and his forty men to travel to England to convert the pagan inhabitants to Christianity. (This is a different Augustine than “Eternal Conscious Torment” Augustine, if you’re wondering).
His strategy was simple but effective: let them keep all their religious holidays, but whenever possible, superimpose Christian imagery on top of them, then rename ‘em and claim ‘em for the Christian calendar. “Gradually, the main heathen feasts became days honouring Christ or one of the Christian martyrs, and the Church had plenty of saints in hand, ready for any eventuality. Over several centuries, all the pagan days of weather prediction – at least 40 in the year – were given saints’ names, and the big feast days were converted to Christian festivals.”
Except however, for one holiday so significant that Christianity assumed the Pagan name: Easter, named after the goddess Eostre and the celebration of the spring equinox Ostara. (This podcast provides a quick historical snack on the pagan origins of Easter). There is also a connection between the root word of Passover and the Easter holiday in many languages (which, as you know by now, represents a whole different set of issues).
So here we are: on the big day itself. Maybe we haven’t exactly journeyed with Jesus this week, but we’ve certainly taken our tour through some of the less desirable aspects of Holy Week. When you decide to reflect on the past, you’re forced to reckon with everything that shows up in the rearview mirror.
With all the new information and resulting emotions, how can we possibly reimagine Easter in a way that leads to peace and not just mental exhaustion?
How can we take active responsibility without taking on paralyzing guilt?
How can we arrive at a practice of this holiday that is honest and lifegiving, and leaves room for us to love others with different beliefs?
Maybe we can learn from people like Dr. Liz Bucar who studies religious appropriation, and try to figure how we can respectfully nurture, grow, and borrow from other religious traditions without harmfully or offensively appropriating them.
Maybe we can keep learning, moving, and growing forward, learning from the mistakes of our ancestors and committing to correcting whichever ones we have the power to correct.
Maybe we can thoughtfully consider which things in our lives we want to come back to life, and which things are better left dead.
Maybe we can reimagine resurrection to be less of a thing one guy did once, and more of the cycle of all living things that we are part of, whether we want to admit it or not.
Maybe Easter is the perfect time to put to death your conditioned guilt handed down by centuries of fear-mongering, and let your mind be renewed by goodness, love, openness, and—though it be showing signs of wear—the still great power of the earth.
After all, you are natural. You are organic. You were born of an animal, you live in a habitat, and you spend your days scurrying for food and shelter. Why would it be wrong for you to understand the rhythms and flow, and to seek meaning and connection with the rest of the natural world you inhabit?
***
I’m glad that Easter week is over after today. I’m glad that the flurry of thoughts and feelings it brings up is behind me for another 51 weeks.
But I’m also grateful that I took the time this year to relearn the history behind it, to reclaim some mystery for myself, and to reimagine what it means to celebrate it beyond the narrow definition I used to have.
Wherever you find yourself as you leave Easter and continue on into the rest of spring, summer, fall and winter, may you find the courage to make your own rhythms, to own the fullness of your religious and personal past, and to reimagine what this time of year and this historic holiday means to you.
Happy Easter to all, and to all a good night.
-Joy
