IT'S EASTER

Psyche = Butterfly / Soul

This Sunday is Easter. The most pivotal holy day of the Christian calendar. Theologically the pageantry of the holiday formed in the middle ages under the Catholic traditions as they spread across Europe. Holy week or the time between Palm and Easter Sunday also referred to as Christ's Passion recounts Jesus' last week of life in Jerusalem. It starts on a high note of hallelujah with palms spread before the peacefully entering donkey with Jesus astride. But by Friday, the same crowd demands his crucifixion.
On Friday, the politically powerful of both the Jewish and Roman communities are satisfied that another cult has come to its end. But on Sunday something appears that will be the faith catalyst for many a Jew and Gentile that leads to the above Catholic tradition's spread across Europe and other regions of the globe.
In classical Graeco-Roman story, the hero often must go through hell to get to heaven or home. Jesus' passion takes him through the week of abandonment by the crowd, friends, and disciples and even as spoken from the cross, his God. But Mary remains with that enigmatic love and bond that only a mother seems to fathom.
In our reading from the first chapter of The Life of Meaning, by Bob Abernathy and Rob Bole, Thomas Lynch a "funeral director, essayist and poet" speaks about "Limning the Rites of Death." He speaks of our mortality as the signature of our species and comments about how we, at least in the Western world view, have decided not to address the topic if possible. What are some of the appropriate ways we might approach the topic we will all encounter one day? How are the deaths of others a part of our being and meaning? What's this got to do with Easter and joy and tradition and our daily experience?

Walter Morton for Terra Incognita