I wish I could say I have a glimmer of understanding or feeling of resurrection. I have a belief in the Resurrection, but not an experience of it. Perhaps that is why we retell the story of Easter every year. Would we need to tell it, if we had the inner deed alive in our thoughts, feelings and will?
Like Rudolf Steiner, I don’t think the human soul is ready to experience the truth of inner resurrection. According to Dr Steiner with all his wisdom, we have a few more incarnations before we can have a living experience of resurrection.
How can we experience the Resurrection, if we keep the suffering of Gethsemane, the betrayal, all the events of Good Friday and the descent into hell safe in a story, in versions that aren’t our own?
The story of Easter Sunday fills me with awe, hope and joy as the resurgence of Nature fills me with delight every Spring. As a being living between spirit and nature, struggling to know my humanity and my individuality, I do not doubt that my spiritual and moral development is leading me slowly to the capacity for pure love that will cause me to die for everyone and the freedom from the laws of nature allowing me to rise from my own death to love again.
But for now, I hope for little excruciating moments of felt inner death followed by a powerful quickening of resurrected life. Do I trust that I will be awake to these dim reflections of Inner Easter Mysteries? Once in a while. More often I am asleep to them or barely dreaming their reality.
What grows stronger in me with each Easter as I strive to find words for connecting what is so faint within me to what can be found in the Gospels is the certainty that at some time in the future over a span of great time, one by one we will each crystalize these mysteries in our souls and know in every cell, every breath, every waking moment the power of our own resurrection.
We will no longer find a sting in death. And the greatest story ever told will no longer need to be spoken because it will live in each of us and we will recognize it in everyone.
Hello Lyn,
I live in Australia on the east coast in a small town called Bellingen. I’m a Registered Nurse and work in University teaching Nurse & Midwives Cultural Awareness.
My deep gratitude for your heartfelt exploration of the mysteries of life. My Christian upbringing and my connection with Anthroposophy through my children being in Steiner Education, means that your work sits as a most meaningful intersection of these two realities within me.
Wishing you many blessings on the journey, and again, my appreciation of all that you share with the world.
Warmest wishes
Beth
That Easter message is so beautifully expressed, Lynn. I often find myself busy travelling or entertaining during the Easter holiday and am frustrated by my lack of attention to the depth of this event. To die and be reborn, to have a glimmer of what this means, is far to reach for me. But your thoughts help me to put it in perspective and have renewal of faith and hope in my inner evolution in the course of time.
I really appreciated these emails. I did as was suggested, I spent a small chunk of time contemplating the suggested theme/question that stood out to me and then I allowed it to fall into the background of my day, coming back to me in moments that sparked some kind of thematic connection.
And I would like to say that just now, at the end of the day, as the sun went down, I experienced some kind of exultation or small resurrection.
For the last two years, I have been teaching in a very difficult school across the country from where I grew up. Each Sunday, dread and fear overtakes my body and I am unable to complete the TO DO list I write up to prepare for my week. I have tried everything to address these feelings. For a long time, I just accepted that I was a terrible teacher and an inefficient human being.
Today, I had so many things in place: I had lists, I had momentum, I was even excited about many tasks on the list. But I spent the day watching TV instead, a common way I sabotage myself.
Then! All of a Sudden! I remembered. I remembered arriving in LA (where I live now) with barely any money, nothing but a suitcase in a rental car, a huge city I knew nothing of, relying completely on a generous friend that I hadnt spent much time with in over a year. I had no living accommodations, no phone charger, no sense of left or right in this huge city. It had been six months since I had been home, and it would be six months until I got back there again. I had been stranded in LA the previous week as part of my job search, had to shell out lots of money for a replacement phone as I lost mine, was still heartbroken and bewildered by my first breakup six months earlier. Little did I know, but the organization I had just been hired to work for was not aligned with my value system, as I would realize four days later, crying to my friend over dinner. I spent my first week in LA at professional development for my job. School started the following week. I started searching for my own apartment a week after that. Unable to wait for my first paycheck, I got a cash advance through my credit card and spent the next year and a half in $5,000 of debt.
Every Sunday, I re-create that feeling for myself. Because I was so desperate to be hopeful about my new surroundings and my new (surprise!) life, that I was utterly unable to stand by myself through the pain, shock, and sheer terror of that experience.
The timing is perfect! Thank you for being a part of my subconscious this weekend!