This year you must have heard the words, “Easter is early.” It was also true of spring. I write this on the day before Easter and it is a glorious looking day. Our perfect New Hampshire blue sky might be filled with drones, but we can’t see them. The ocean may be inching closer, but we can’t hear it. The moose without snow cover may soon have an onslaught of ticks, but we assume they’ll get along.
For many of us, our lives are blue skies and sunny decks. The grass has not started growing. There is nothing in this world to provoke our guilt or fear. Oh, if it were only so. Will it ever be?
I was born in Camden, New Jersey, and I don’t know how many times I have said, “Camden hasn’t changed,” but it has. Its horrors have grown. Nevertheless, I assume there must be revival moments in Camden. True or not, how do we make love take over, whether it be in Camden or Karachi?
The original Easter creator and believer was Jesus. He knew he had to face a horrible death. “For God so loved the world…” The older I am, the more the story of Easter is about Jesus’s life of love. Even his death and resurrection. He was all about loving others, all others.
We don’t yet know what causes cancer or how to stop other certain other diseases, but we do know what causes poverty and what begins prejudice and abuse. We know why elephants are being killed and the rain forests destroyed. We can reduce pollution and we have the means to prevent war.
So why is this not happening? I don’t have to look further than myself to know why. It is because I am comfortable. I love where I live and who I live with. The Monadnock region is beautiful. It can convince me there are no problems and I relate well to bliss. When I am home, I can’t see or hear the bad stuff. I guess that’s the way it should be, it is what makes home, home.
The man who lived the first Easter must have felt the same way and yet he gave up bliss. He willingly brought on angst, because he saw others’ angst. He had a plan and God was real to him. Together they had a vision of where the world was headed.
Working in a hospital has improved not only my vision, but my action in loving. I meet people that I wouldn’t have met in any other way. How I got to be there is a mystery. No matter, I have come to experience the power of other’s love. The love I read about in Jesus’s life. It is a strong, moving love. It has the power to heal. If we let it.
I have no formula on how to obtain such love. No magic words. I only know I couldn’t find it until I allowed in some angst. Angst of memory, angst of every day moments. Only then did I find a place, a privileged spot. One that allows me to make a difference one relationship at a time.
By being a part of a team devoted to healing, we often add more days to another’s life. Someone who might save the elephants, kill the ticks, or make Camden whole again. Planting seeds in angst might be a fodder for bliss. May it be that we have the eyes to see and the ears to hear.
Bob Ritchie writes a monthly column in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript.