So Excited to Be Alive

Do you ever have one of those days where you wake up and you’re just so happy to be alive? Sometimes, it’s one of those spontaneous Gifted Days.  Often, though, it’s after something that’s not at all good has happened or something terribly awful.  We survived something.  

It’s these times that we realize what is most important in life.  Life comes into sharp focus.  It’s not the stuff, it’s not the money, it’s not our clothing, it’s not our job, it’s not our social media image.  It’s comes back to who we really are and what we really have to offer. It’s when we remember people and our connectedness to people.  Sometimes, we’re given a near mystical experiences that we know, we absolutely know, we’re all interconnected.  Every single one of us.  We are all one big family in the hollow of God’s hands.  There is no other time when this is so incredibly clear as this moment. 

We’ve all been in darkness.  When we’ve faced deep darkness, like the tomb, life becomes so clear. We’re just so happy to be alive and we want to hold the people we most love close.  We recognize we’re not alone.  We feel deeply the shared human experience of pain and love—we know deep compassion for one another.  We want to simplify our lives down to the pure and daily joys and loves.  We want to stop wasting time on the things that don’t matter and hold people close and figure out what our great work us.  

We deeply realize God’s call to us not to stay in the dark places, but to resurrect ourselves out of the gloom and into everything.  

Our great work is always love.  Each of us us called to this love in a different way.  That’s our personal call and our personal work on this journey of life.  That’s Living Easter.  

Living Easter asks us to shed those things that dampen our spirits.  The things that hold us back from grace and love.  The things that leave us overwhelmed, lost, confused, and entombed.  Easter asks us to resurrect ourselves out of the tomb, and gloom, and into Life.  To resurrect ourselves into a deeply meaningful work that really, really matters. 

Living Easter asks us what do we do with this new morning?  This new life?  This rebirth?  This resurrection?  The Easter Story gives us the answers.  Go and live and love.  Make the most of this precious gift of life.  Along the way, if we follow the path, we will find Jesus.  Along the way there will be help.  Angels beside us.  If we listen, we’ll hear what we need.  We’ll hear the questions we need.  We’ll hear the answer we need.  We’ll be reminded of the light when there is darkness.  

That’s what Easter is. It’s that moment where we go through the terrible things and we wake up Easter morning and we’re just so happy to be alive. So grateful that we made it through. We have new lives to resurrect that reaffirm our faith in humanity, in one another in ourselves.  That we know there is a great Mystery all around us.  

This is what Living Easter is. This is why we come back here every year to reaffirm this. To be resurrected. To remember to live each day as if we’re so lucky to be alive. As if it’s a wonderful world. As if we matter. And everybody else in it matters.

This is why we come each Easter to be with one another and celebrate.  We celebrate Life.  We celebrate Love.  We resurrect ourselves from the winter and the ashes and the tomb to Live Easter.  There is always a touch of the tomb in celebration and a touch of celebration in the tomb.   PAUSE.  The palms we raised last Sunday in shouts of joy become next year’s Ash Wednesday ashes.  This reminds us that it is all interconnected.  There is no separation of the everything.  We will celebrate and be so excited to be alive.  We will be mired in the darkness of the tomb, and it is all okay.  It’s all Good.  

We celebrate this morning and reaffirm our faith in what is sacred and special. We come out of the tomb in love.  Love of self and who we are called to be.  Love of friends and neighbors.  Not just those next door to us, but all people.  We come out of the tomb deeply in love.  

We reaffirm that we can resurrect our lives into something even better than before.  We come to  refresh and renew and we come to be refreshed and renewed. 

We come here on Easter to remember to live Easter Lives.  To recommit to our faith and the goals of love, peace, gentleness, grace. PAUSE.  We come to reorient ourselves, like the sun, to what really matters.  We come to remember the daily, moment to moment, practice of faith.  

We may stumble and fall. We may enter dark tombs.  We may hurt and be hurt.  We may cry and weep.  

But there is always the angel on the rock, opening doorways.  We will always find Jesus when we commit to a journey of faith with grace.  It just takes a remembering.  Remembering of Love.  That’s it.  Love.  One word.  

It is Easter morning we’re just so happy to be alive.  We celebrate by bringing out the flowers, we bring out the flames, we bring at the chalice, we bring out the butterflies. We celebrate life anew.  We celebrate our deepest relationships.  We beautify our space to reaffirm our connection to the Heavens.  We confirm our commitment to the path.  The one that goes through the desert, through the torture, through the disorienting experience, into the tomb, and out of the tomb into the light. Into the dawn. Into the Easter morning. Into Life.  

Happiest of Easter Mornings to one and all.