Resurrection

On the Sunday when most Christian's celebrate Easter, the Unitarian Universalist congregations I've served have always held a special service called, "A Rite of Spring:  An Eastertide Celebration in Two Acts."  (If you're interested, here's a link to the full text.)

After looking at how the story of Jesus' crucifixion and, more specifically, the time in the tomb before the resurrection echoes the lessons taught by the natural world through the cold, hard reality of winter, and how both point to a reality we all know of such "tomb time," the service then celebrates the undeniably good news of the resurrection stories, the inescapable fact of renewal in springtime, and the promise that neither will the wintry "tombs" in our lives have the last word.

To my mind, one of the most important lines in the service comes near  the end:

The question is not whether we believe in resurrection but whether we have known it —known it in our own lived experience, seen it in the lives of others, felt it in the world around us.

My question for you, then, is when have you experienced "resurrection" in your life?  What have been the times you have felt most "dead," "entombed," and what did it feel like when you burst forth like a crocus through the last dusting of snow?

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Whatever the Weather

To a greater or lesser extent, depending on where you are, spring has begun!

Hallelujah!

It's long been recognized that many people have a strong emotional interconnectedness with the weather.  Seasonal affective disorder (with the incredibly apt acronym SAD) is a real phenomenon, affecting 6% of the population each year (with another 20% or so exhibiting at least mild symptoms).  It's serious, too. No less a body than the Mayo Clinic encourages people not to "brush off that yearly feeling as simply a case of the 'winter blues' or a seasonal funk that you have to tough out on your own."  As someone who's had a life-long relationship with depression, I would echo that advice.

Is there an analogous interconnectedness between weather and our spirituality?  It might be hard to tease this apart from the effect weather has on our emotions, yet I do believe that our spiritual lives and our emotional lives are not mere clones of one another.  They are connected, to be sure.  What in life isn't connected to everything else?  This is one of the fundamental truths of Buddhism, sometimes called "dependent co-origination," and sometimes more simply, "this is, because that is."  Nothing exists unless everything else exists, because nothing exists entirely independently.  How can we think, then, that body-mind-spirit-emotion aren't inextricably linked?  

Nonetheless, just because things are linked does't mean that they are identical, so I return to my wondering:  is there a link between our spirits and the seasons analogous to that between the weather and our emotions?

I'd love to hear your thoughts ...

Pax tecum,

RevWik