Even as those of us in the Western church are celebrating the first week of the Easter season, the Eastern/Orthodox Church is in Holy Week. Orthodox Easter is this coming Sunday, and for the millions of displaced and grieving Ukrainians, it will be a very different Easter season. As we consider how to both celebrate and hold those in pain, let this week of already-Easter (Western Church) and not-yet-Easter (Eastern Church) be a space of living into that tension. Let yourself linger there in the both/and a bit today. How do we hold both the grief of Good Friday AND the joy of Easter? How do we feast—and invite others into that feast—while deeply aware that there is suffering all around us? How do you hold this tension when it comes up in you? Is your tendency to ignore one or the other? To keep the party so big that the pain has no place, or in remembering the grief to be unable to celebrate? How can you honor both your own pain and the pain of others this week – even *this* week? Even while celebrating the most joyous feast of the year? What do you find yourself wanting to say to God in that space of being present to both, particularly in relation to the ones displaced by war this Easter? The ones who would normally be celebrating Holy Thursday today, cooking and cleaning and getting everything ready for the next three holy days? So much has been upended for them. There is so much we can never know, and yet this week gives us a chance to be-with our siblings worldwide in a way that isn’t always readily available to us. See if you notice any invitations coming up for you this week. May we learn how to both weep with those who weep AND rejoice with those who rejoice, neglecting neither in our learning to love and live into what is true. Image by Marjan Blan on Unsplash

Posted by Jamie Bonilla at 2022-04-21 13:55:54 UTC