Meditations & Messages

EASTER 2010

Easter is a celebration of resurrection. It is a celebration of the spirit of love and reconciliation that survives crucifixion or assassination – that is, the spirit that survives the death of its exponents and exemplars. The season of Easter is also, for most of us in the northern hemisphere, the time of the resurrection of the living earth, green again after months of hibernation. Here in Western New York the most noticeable change is in the woods – the trees remain bare, but much of the ground is filled with the thin green sprouts of the wild leek, which will flush out to a carpet of green by Easter morning. It was a stroke of genius, from our local perspective, to arrange for the Resurrection to be celebrated just when the earth, too, is coming to life again.

Dear God, bless us with your Spirit of Love , that we may through our words and deeds awaken that same Spirit of Love and Charity which we know lies in the soul of every person. Let the miracles of love break down ancient enmities and overcome ugly rumors and suspicions.

Bless us with your Spirit of Truth , that we may tear away the masks of pretense and theory and speculation, which now gloss reality with false faces in the minds and utterances of our media, our neighbors, our leaders, and ourselves.

Bless us with your Spirit of Peace , that we may bring calm where there is panic, patience where there is urgency, and hope where there is fear. Protect us from the incessant demands of those who are hurried or worried, and bring them, too, to a calming acceptance of setbacks, failures, unwelcome facts, and losses.

The word ‘theory’ covers a multitude of virtues and vices, sometimes counting as knowledge and sometimes contrasting with knowledge.  But theory is as important as observation in science, and we all take force, gravity, electrons, mass, and continental drift as genuine aspects of reality even though they are theoretical rather than observational (empirical) features.  We all also recognize that the concept of “luminiferous ether” that was generally accepted ast the outset of the nineteenth century is a theoretical concept that was discarded because of the Michelson-Morley experiment. 

There is something prophetic as well as pragmatic about Quakerism. Prophets were never voices of the mainstream, which at least since Constantine has regularly sanctified the instruments of power and war that I consider idols - - just the sort of idols scourged by prophets. But the prophetic voices were embedded in tradition, not voices in the wilderness. Nor is my voice a voice in the wilderness.