Easter Snow: A Frozen Hallelujah, Étude

There was candy. There was singing and there were flowers, and kids in bright new outfits. There was Jesus coming up out of a cave like, “I don’t think so!” and there were kids home from college. There was the breaking of Lenten fasts with much barbeque and rejoicing.

But what if it still doesn’t feel like Easter?

Because on Sunday, there was also snow. And still, three days later, it is cold, y’all. I don’t mean chilly-for-April cold. Not just I’m-spoiled-from-living-in-Arizona-for-years cold. I mean gray, sub-freezing, frost and snow and sleet nonsense cold. It does not feel like Easter.

The Monday after Easter is otherwise known as National Clergy Hibernation day. Which means, other than to get a massage and (reluctantly) pick my kids up from school, I didn’t leave the house all day yesterday. I took a bath at a weird time of morning, just to try and warm up. I could not get the water hot enough. I felt like a lobster in a bad situation, because I just kept adding more and more hot water to the pot. I mean tub. I filled it almost full, and it’s a ridiculously large tub. Then I sat by the fire under a blanket most of the day. And then took a hot shower before dinner.

Somehow the cold seems colder when it is not supposed to be cold anymore. Dammit.

Jesus has risen. Amazing. But what if it doesn’t feel like Easter? For whatever reason. Like maybe

the world still feels like chaos at this moment. And

there is so much hate and now some

new and creative ways to hate Muslims, apparently?

there are still so many fucking guns, and people who worship them

or maybe you have a sick kid

or your marriage is hanging in the balance

or your job feels up in the air

or that thing you’ve been trying to let go just won’t quite let you

just won’t quite let you go

or the loved one that died is still just

gone. 

Because for most of us mortals… Dead is dead.

On Sunday, Jesus came back from the grave. But come Monday, some things still hurt. Come Tuesday, it’s still cold. Come Wednesday, some things will still be broken. Loss is loss, and pain is pain. And the resurrection that means new life doesn’t always fix it. New life is still imperfect. Still frozen over sometimes.

I figure this is right where the disciples found themselves, come Monday. You know, after they put away the leftovers, and found all the hidden eggs, and hung up their Easter dresses. This is right where they were. Amazed, yes. Hopeful, absolutely. Game face on for the mission ahead? You better believe it.

But broken. Cold, and broken.

For all the joy they felt at his return from death, he’s still not precisely WITH them, is he? He still died to them, in a way. They still have to let him go. And that letting go business is hard. A mess, quite actually.

You know what? There’s a Leonard Cohen song for that… (there’s a Cohen song for everything, amiright?)

But for just this day… for this Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday after Easter, when it is JUST SO COLD. When

kids are marching for their lives and

teachers are marching to just get running water and retirement checks and a new history bookFFS and

women still have to fight to be fully-accredited disciples, even though they were the first and the last-damn-ones there, always, and

here we still are, with all of our messy human nonsense….

Somehow Cohen’s “cold and broken” hallelujah is more fitting than the Handel version. Or whatever the adorable kids sang in church yesterday, whatever the trumpets announced and the lilies adorned. Whatever heartache the bright new clothes dressed up for a hot minute…maybe it’s still there today. We sing the songs about death having no power, about love’s victory. But is “victory” what we’re after, exaclty? So the hymn goes:

And I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch 
but love is not a victory march
it’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah.

This song has like a thousand verses, anybody’s version. But this one is the heart of everything. It’s the fragment of prayer that I’m sure Jesus lifted up for those disciples as he broke the bread for them that one last time, before he had to leave them for good. “There’s no winning here,” he reminded them. “There is no claiming of a throne or a title, because we were never after those things. It’s not done. It’s never done. Get back out there.”

And that refrain hung on the air for a minute, and then left. Like the sound of him.

Did you know that you aren’t supposed to say ‘Hallelujah” at all during Lent? We remove it from the liturgy and music, because we are meant to be exile. A desert season on the calendar to shake off the dust and simplify; to reconcile and repent and become something new.

I’ve got a pretty good feel for the rhythm of how a blog post should go, and this is the point at which I should be winding down to a conclusion, a point. Honestly, I’ve kind of got nothing. Just a riff on how the cycles of nature don’t always wind up coinciding with the liturgical calendar, but they can somehow align perfectly with the climate of the human spirit, and the story of these fractured civilizations we build and become.

And also, maybe this: however imperfect its presentation this year, the “hallelujah” has been gifted back to us. In word and in spirit, it is back in the lexicon now, this 3rd (and 4th, and next after that) day of April. For all the ways it feels incomplete, maybe even discordant, it is still a hope, a rejoicing in doubt and darkness… It’s a letting go, even when letting go is what hurts. We are released from exile. 

Ok, so maybe it’s not all Peeps and rainbows and brass bands. But we are where we are. And really being where we are–however fragmented the “now” and “this” and “here” might be–isn’t that its own kind of resurrection? A waking up to what is… and hearing that call to go and tell about the hope that once stepped out of the darkness, the life that refused to die. A hallelujah that stubbornly shows up in our winter places, and a love that will not let us go.