Saturday, April 7, 2012

Recognizing Resurrection

Visiting one week after Buster’s passing, Isabella, upon seeing his grave, immediately and without prompting said, “Doggie!” In a pile of dirt and stone she recognized our beloved dog --she’d marked that moment in her mind, watched us grieve, perhaps processed it, and, if nothing else, saw this quiet, unmarked, removed place as a special one.

I stood still and felt amazed at her remembrance and understanding, and in the same way, I see this understanding implicit to revisiting Triduum. I find something new to experience each year, even after a lifetime of Easters. This year, having a sense of mortality is really at the fore--I recall last year thinking, during Good Friday services, that this was a funeral celebration (the oddity of seeing Easter in this way caught me off guard). Watching Buster die reminded me of other deaths and perhaps made me cognizant of my own. If I could feel this excruciating way about our Buster, then how is it possible for a parent to witness her child’s death, or grapple with her own in the face of family abandonment?

Seeking my soul, this season has been a renewal, a time to clean out the excess in my life.There’s always room for improvement, and plenty left for me to learn about life and death. Isabella’s delight and discovery are what I aim for; the elusive sense of redemption, this rethinking of our anxieties, hang-ups, all of this is wrapped up in our spiritual strivings. The rising of our souls should become a personal, joy-filled, inexplicable thing that we can just barely understand or express--that recognition of Resurrection in the moment can come without prompting and surprise us, every time.