Earth Day and Good Friday

Earth

I am the earth and the earth is me,

Older each day, wounded and scarred..Storm ravaged, bashed and broken by wind, quake and greed.

Someone plants flowers, rice, wheat and trees. Brown grass turns green with sunshine.

Rains wash away earth, reroute rivers as trees drink deeply and are reshaped.

Once tender and young, vulnerable and uncertain,

Now older and knowing destruction rearranges more than it destroys,

Pain a reminder of life and living and growing and changing.

Darkness and discipline the balance of tenderness and warmth.

Born of fire and passion, holding deep the warmh of the flame.

Spinning and rolling and turning face to the sun and the dark side of the moon.

Dry barren places where nothing can grow, Gardens and forests filled with poety and song.

I am the earth and the earth is me. Enduring all in the promise of tomorrows memories.

Wars and weddings; danger and dancing; death and resurrection.

Chaos and harmony.

An always tomorrow, unknown, uncertain, but always.

I am the earth, the earth is me.

Today is Earth Day. A day in April when I find myself meditating on life and death, where we come from and how we become and are undone. Two people shared a birthday in April many years apart. One died long before her death and one was living when she died. Yet, both live in me and memory.

There are many ways to "observe" Good Friday. The day a man died for a world filled with sin and shame. The day that goodness won a victory over power, prestige and privilege. The day that by all rights should have been forgotten 2000 years ago. A day that puzzles many, turn millions to "the church" and turns others away. A day of reality followed by a period of puzzlement, then a day of celebrating the impossible, improbable and unbelievable.

Earth Day. Is there a Wind Day, Fire Day, Water Day....or would that be too Buddhist for a western comtemplitive? Yet, who will deny that air is life, water is life and fire is both light and life, all elements Christians revere and children delight in and all life depends on.

Pink Bunnies delivering decorated eggs; "Rites of Spring;" a literal or metaphorical belief that a man died and lived again; somehow we spend the next 2 days thinking about darkness, anticipating a day for celebration of life.

Some are attracted to "the church" by Christian belief in resurrection and many rebuffed by the impractical, impossible story. History, science, literature and Hollywood have a go at "Harvey & Jesus" as the earth turns.

Looking out the window, the sky has stopped melting and sunbeams are peeking through the buds on the trees lighting greening and growing grass that was in remission for so long. I think about my life and earth history. I think about the nature of disaster and recovery; of vulnerability and resiliency; of chaos and consistancy; of memory and of two that live in me.

I think about the earth. I think about life.