Staying Connected Blog
Rev. Thomas Disrud offers a reflection today.
How is it we make the journey from Good Friday to Easter? It has been said, and I think I agree, that Unitarian Universalists sometimes want to get to Easter before we fully experience Good Friday. That the journey from death to resurrection first is about the deaths that are part of living. That the suffering and loss and brokenness from Jesus’ death are important preludes to the Easter story of new life and rebirth.
Tomorrow evening we will have a Good Friday Tenebrae service at 7 pm in the Eliot Chapel. A Tenebrae service features a gradual extinguishing of candles to symbolize the losses that are part of this day. It will be a somber and reflective service featuring a series of scripture passages, prayers and special music. It will be a chance to bear witness to the deaths we have known and the ones we know in this present time.
This Easter I am especially aware of that dual reality of life and death living side by side. Think of these last years and what they have meant for us. There have been the very real deaths from Covid but also the ways of being together that have been lost. The patterns of connection, the realization of how important come people are in our lives, the loss connections we had a places like church.
It feels as if we are still in some pattern of regathering, some pattern of finding new life. I know in my own life I am very much aware of needing a space to grieve what has been but also a space for celebrate the life that is emerging.
So l look forward to being with you on Good Friday and on especially on Easter Sunday. May we find ourselves on the journey towards that new life and all that is emerging.
Here is a short poem by Gregory Orr for today:
Some say you’re lucky
If nothing shatters it.
But then you wouldn’t
Understand poems or songs.
You’d never know
Beauty comes from loss.
It’s deep inside every person:
A tear tinier
Than a pearl or thorn.
It’s one of the places
Where the beloved is born.
Take good care in these days good people. I look forward to seeing you in church.
Blessings,
Tom