Today’s blog
Lynn Murphy Mark
The edge of Spring
The trees out back are budding with what will soon be neon green leaves. I love this color of Spring, when everything that rises from Winter’s passing signals new life. The days are still cool, although we reached 70-something the other day and I put on a short sleeved shirt to acknowledge it. This is Missouri, and yesterday it went from the 70’s to the 50’s in no time. No matter, I still have on my Spring shirt.
And this is Holy Week. Yesterday I was talking to my sponsor and the subject of Easter came up. We both have grandsons, although there’s an age difference between her teens and my little guys. It turns out that both sets of grands expect an Easter basket and an Easter egg hunt. It seems you are never too old to request that a tradition be continued.
Her kids are coming to her house for Easter brunch and other festivities. Mine will be in upstate New York, “helping” their parents work on the A frame they are building on a lake lot. My Cameron, however, is quite distressed that they will not be home on Sunday to receive the baskets that Santa Bunny leaves for him and Alexander. This dramatic change of plans required him to write a note to Santa Bunny instructing him (or her) to kindly deposit the baskets upstate.
The land in upstate New York is covered in quite a bit of snow, but Jackie will manage to orchestrate an Easter egg hunt. That’s what you do when you’re a parent of a 4 and a 5 year old. As for my sponsor, I’m not clear if she is giving her boys a hunt, or handing them the eggs and having them hide them themselves. Either way, TRADITION!!!
Today is Maundy Thursday, the day on which Jesus ate his last supper with his guys. But it’s also the day he washed their feet, reminding them that humility is a desirable character trait. He washed their feet to show them that we are all equals in the eyes of God, and that no one is too good to refuse to care for another. It reminds me of the African word, “Ubuntu”, meaning that my humanity exists only because of yours.
“Maundy” comes from the Latin word, “mandatum”, or commandment. Jesus said, “I give you a new commandment”, as he finished washing the disciples’ feet. Imagine their consternation as their master teacher gently wiped the road dirt from their feet. If they only knew what the next three days would bring they would have wept at the sincerity of his actions.
Last Easter I wrote three short pieces on the next three days. The agony of Good Friday, the sorrow of Holy Saturday, and the miracle of Easter were on my mind and I was compelled to write about their meaning to me. I wrote them from the point of view of someone who has lost a loved one, just as the women and the other disciples did. I was also taken, for the first time in many years, by the powerful role that the women played on all three days. Even the bible doesn’t say much about the men, but the women were courageous enough to be as close to Jesus as they were allowed to get on Friday, to mourn quietly outside of his tomb on Saturday, and to go again the next day to grieve their loss.
So, here we are on the verge of our Spring, the resurrection of all things green and colorful, the signal that the seasons are following their normal cycle and that life goes on as expected each year. There’s comfort in that.