“ …we should be taking steps to celebrate Easter in creative new ways: in art, literature, children’s games, poetry, music, dance, festivals, bells, special concerts, anything that comes to mind. This is our greatest festival. …if Lent is a time to give things up, Easter ought to be a time to take things up. Champagne for breakfast again—well, of course. Christian holiness was never meant to be merely negative…. [The Easter season] ought to be a time to balance out Lent by taking something up, some new task or venture, something wholesome and fruitful and outgoing and self-giving. You may be able to do it only for six weeks, just as you may be able to go without beer or tobacco only for the six weeks of Lent. But if you really make a start on it, it might give you a sniff of new possibilities, new hopes, new ventures you never dreamed of. It might bring something of Easter into your innermost life. It might help you wake up in a whole new way. And that’s what Easter is all about.” - N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope What might you “take up” this Easter season as a way of feasting? What is something that feels particularly life-giving to you, but you rarely seem to find time for? What brings joy, delight, new life to your soul? How might you take it up in a way that doesn’t then become a burden of “should”? Easter feasting is an expression of pure joy, even when the realities of life feel more complicated than that. How are you being invited to live into this season? What is your particular language of celebration? It may involve food, or it may involve creativity or relationship or beauty (or…?). Lean in, this Easter. Find ways to express your “Eastering” that really connect with your own soul and its awareness of new life, in and around you. (And share yours with us, if you'd like! Let's feast together a bit!)

Posted by Jamie Bonilla at 2022-04-19 14:08:00 UTC