Something New

I don’t know about you, but to me this Easter feels a little bit…heavy.

Easter for me is usually a joyful occasion–the colors are bright, egg hunts are fun, spring is everywhere. It’s supposed to be a celebration. Of new life, of new possibilities. Of rebirth.

Spring is here this year, just like it is every year. But this year to me it feels artificial, like a sugary candy shell covering something nasty underneath. There is a lot of ugliness and brutality in the world right now, and it feels suffocating. Impossible to ignore and senseless. And I’ll admit that I’ve lost the Easter spirit.

I went on a walk this morning to clear my head. Nature is pure. It can be gentle, it can be fierce. Sometimes it can even be deadly. But it is without malice or deception. When I spend time outside I feel like I leave some of the uncertainty, the fear, the emotions so familiar to human beings, behind me. Instead I join the greater energy of the world and I can exist alongside the natural forces that power this planet–the wind, the running water, the plants and trees.

I look around me and I see new things– budding flowers, baby birds in nests, a smiling child. They have just arrived. They are a promise of something better. And when everything else seems rotten and I question humanity, I look at these new presences here on Earth and I feel a little hope. They are a fresh chance. The world is constantly unmaking and remaking itself. And every new life is an opportunity. I don’t know how long it will take, but I have to believe that one day as humans, we will do better.

Today war will extinguish more innocent lives. I wish I could stop it. I can’t. So from far away I close my eyes and I send a wish. For everyone who will give their last breath today defending their country, who will be senselessly slaughtered by the forces of evil, I pray that as you close your eyes for the last time, that you will reopen them in paradise, surrounded by everything that is good. That your body and mind will be healed, reborn into a place where there is no suffering and no more pain.

Sending you peace wherever you are,

Winter