Kathy Escobar

resurrecting.

Home
resurrecting.

by

Today is Resurrection Sunday (and it’s also my son’s 21st birthday!). It’s a day where we tell the Easter story and Jesus risen from the tomb and remember that out of the death and darkness, hope and new life emerge.

Despite many shifts in faith over the years, I am still thankful for resurrection and that without the Friday and Saturday of Jesus’ story, Sunday means nothing. Without death and suffering, there is no joy. Our past is always part of our future. Our stories are always a strange and holy mix of sorrow and joy, beautiful and ugly, dark and light, despair and hope.

I also love another form of the word–resurrecting.

Here are some synonyms for “resurrecting”:  awakening, bouncing back, breathing new life into, brightening, coming to life, making whole, overcoming, reawakening, recovering, rekindling, renewing, renovating, restoring, resuscitating, snapping out of it, springing up, strengthening, waking up.

Resurrect-ing.

It’s a verb. It’s active. It’s ongoing.

It’s not an event but a way of living.

One of my favorite lines in a poem is from Wendell Berry, one of the most often quoted around Easter time. He says, “practice resurrection.”

Many of us are resurrecting in all kinds of unique, wonderful, and scary ways this season.

We’re waking up.

We’re healing.

We’re shedding things that hinder.

We’re coming to life again after a season of painful loss.

We’re finding our voice and advocating and resisting and persisting.

We’re uncovering our passions.

We’re discovering life in unlikely places.

We’re showing up instead of hiding.

We’re thawing hardened hearts.

We’re loving God in new ways.

We’re trying new things.

We’re loosening our grip on things we once held tightly.

We’re rebuilding after deconstructing.  

We’re trying to stand up after a season of crawling.

We are resurrecting.

While I love sharing this scripture from 2 Corinthians 5:17 when we baptize people, “The old has gone, the new is here”, in my day to day living, I also like to think of it as an active part of spiritual formation and transformation “the old is always dying, and the new is always coming.”

That’s much more what real life is like for most of us.  

The old is always dying, the new is always coming.

This month we celebrate The Refuge’s 11th birthday. 11 years of a lot of hard and beautiful stuff, that’s for sure. A lot of dying, a lot of living. But no matter how wacky it has been, it also one of those God-given places in-real-life that I can keep practicing what resurrecting means.

Where the old keeps dying and the new keeps coming–not only in my own life but in our life together as a Christian community.

Where there’s no finish line, no “I’ve arrived”, “We have this nailed down”, no “i’ll never struggle with that again!”

Where I keep learning all kinds of things I need to learn about awakening, bouncing back, breathing new life into, brightening, coming to life, making whole, overcoming, reawakening, recovering, rekindling, renewing, renovating, restoring, resuscitating, snapping out of it, springing up, strengthening, waking up.

Where I keep remembering that resurrecting is not born out of life and ease and comfort and light.

It comes out of death and trouble and discomfort and darkness.

But it’s always coming. again, again, and again.

All kinds of lovely slivers of hope. joy. peace. love. mercy. forgiveness. grace. justice. beauty.

Death and life.

Life and death.

The old always dying.

The new always coming.

Resurrection.

Practice resurrection.

Easter people.

Resurrecting.

Resurrect-ing.

Love this Easter morning from Colorado, Kathy

//

That’s it for me for this Holy Week series. It was fun for me to do on a lot of different levels; thanks for being here! The other posts are: