Resurrection, Carried on the Wings of A Bumblebee

At last Lent is over and we are in the season of Easter. For me, the past days have been a tangled mix of emotions, including the death of a dear friend on Good Friday. Carolyn had been in cancer treatment for several years, so the news was not unexpected, but it is always a blow to lose a friend, is it not?

When I told another friend that Carolyn had died on Good Friday, she replied by saying what a blessing it was to die on that day. Her observation surprised me, but in the days since then I have come to believe she was right. It was time for Carolyn to end her battle for life, and for a Christian, there is no more holy, sacred time to face death than on Good Friday. I don’t know if Carolyn was aware of what the day was, but I like to think that she knew it at some level, and that it was a comfort to her to remember that the despair of Good Friday is followed, inevitably, by the joy of Easter.

That was not the only death that touched my life last week, for the news of a teenager’s suicide in a nearby town also darkened the days leading to Easter. I did not know him personally, but I know people who are deeply grieving for him, and so two deaths overshadowed me.

In the midst of it all the stately march of rituals continued. Especially on Good Friday, the ancient rhythms resonated for me. At the evening service that day, the congregation was invited to come forward to hammer a nail into a large wooden cross set up before the altar. You may think it macabre, but it is always one of the most powerful times of the church year, that moment when the sound of the hammer begins to echo within the sanctuary. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Death comes knocking, once again.

So much grieving, so much pain, in so many people’s lives. And yet the spring continues to unfold and on Easter morning we greeted each other with “He is risen!” Now there’s blind faith for you, believing that not only did Jesus rise once, but that he continues to rise, here in this broken world.

We ended the week with a Greek feast at our house, with a long table that spread into the living room because there were so people around the table. We drank many bottles of wine and stuffed ourselves on spanakopita, lamb, hummus, olives, cheeses, and dolmathes.

After the meal my friend Inny and I escaped from the clean-up (thank you, Bob and Chris) to walk in my neighbor’s garden as evening fell. Now you must understand that Philip’s garden is not just any garden, but a True-Wonder-Among-Gardens. And you should know as well that Inny is blind, so as we walked among the flowers I had the happy task of describing their colors to her (because Inny lost her sight as a teenager, she can visualize colors). I told her about the differences between jonquils and daffodils, and tried to communicate the particular shade of violet that the bluebells wore. At each new kind of flower Inny would bend down and gently feel its petals and leaves, delighting in their textures.

On that slow walk around the garden in the soft light of evening, I came to see Philip’s garden in a completely new way, because although Inny doesn’t have physical sight, she has another, deeper kind of vision. She taught me that the satin petals of a jonquil differ from the rougher ones of a daffodil. I noticed for the first time how hosta leaves are like tubes as they emerge from the soil. I savored with her the rough edges on the bark of a sycamore tree.  Her pleasure in the garden’s beauty made me realize how I walk by it every day and never really see it.

My favorite moment came when we stopped in front of bed that had a bumblebee hovering in it. It seemed too early in the season for such a creature, but there it was, drinking deeply from each flower.

“Explain to me what it’s doing,” Inny said, so I told her how the bee was flying from flower to flower, and how when it landed on each blossom it was so heavy that the flower dipped low. Then we stood there for a long time, listening. Buzz, buzz, followed by silence, then again a buzzing. I had gone my entire life not noticing the bumblebee’s rhythmic song. How could I have missed it?

That evening, at the end of several emotion-filled days, I realized that while much of the world thinks Easter is only about spring and candy and pastel bunnies, the true richness of the day comes only from realizing that it represents the intertwining of death and life, despair and joy. Without the darkness of Good Friday, Easter is a hollow shell. Without the knowledge that death will come knocking for us one day, we don’t realize life’s fragile, iridescent beauty.

So I vow to mark this Easter season—and honor the memory of Carolyn and of that despairing young man–by trying to truly see how resurrection is happening all around me, carried on the wings of bumblebees and heralded by the silent ringing of bluebells.