This is a strange Easter, no doubt about it. The day to celebrate resurrection this year is marked by separation, isolation, and underlying fear. People are dying, and the world as we knew it has gone underground. Some are mourning. Some are waiting with apprehension for what will come next. What will happen to our lives and to the way the world will be?

In many ways, this is not too different from the first the very first Easter morning for the followers of Jesus. While we generally try to celebrate the resurrection and get on to the part of the story where the tomb is empty and the Living Jesus has appeared, perhaps this Easter it makes sense to start as the disciples did. Let’s accept the uncertainty of the moment.

It’s important not to use Easter as a form of spiritual bypassing or to try to move on to resurrection before our dying process has finished. We can have hope in the midst of darkness, and that’s important—we will get there—but if we try to jump the process, we risk abandoning the path of dying that Jesus laid out for us in the first place.

The Christian Soul Accepts the Cross c. 1630 Museo del Prado

The Longest Three Days

“Let Yourself Die.”

These words marked the beginning of my dark night season. I didn’t know what they meant at the time. I didn’t know how to do it. In some ways, I didn’t even really fully consciously know that was the crux of the Jesus path, the sign of Jonah, the mystery of the path of descent.

Like many Christians raised in the church, I had projected this journey solely onto Jesus, disassociating myself from any personal need to go through such a process. “Take up your cross” meant simply to endure the hard things in life—not to actually undergo my own process of dying to self.

I went through eight years of Easters in this dark night. Sometimes I tried to envision myself in the place of resurrected life, but it didn’t stick because I still had more dying to do.

What if we still have more dying to do? What if we have more dying to do as a world? What if we need a little more time in the tomb?

Let us not abandon the work too soon. Today is Easter, and that doesn’t always mean resurrection now. Perhaps this year, more than ever in our lives, it is a day for hope in the resurrection to come at some unknown time in the future.

The World in the Tomb

The individual path of Easter is not the only story. There is a global path, which is especially present this year as well. The human world is in the tomb, and what exactly has died of the old ways remains to be seen. What new ways of being will emerge when the stone is rolled back are still aspirations and hopes.

Much like in our individual lives, there was and is a pervasive denial of the need for the path of the cross. Prosperity and progress, growth and gain. The Ascent of humanity. In circles of evolutionary spirituality these values often underlie the one-way-path approach toward the Omega point, the culmination and fulfillment of glorious manifestation. This is true but partial.

The Christian story gives us the gift of the cross as its central story, not as a cosmic sacrifice on behalf of a lost world, but as an invitation to the necessary path we all must take if we hope to really live. It is a call to finally release the deep human urge to scapegoat, to pass off blame to others—and even to pass off the work of death and resurrection to another. This is the necessary path for all of us. Death is defeated by dying before you die and discovering your own resurrection on the other side.

The world desperately needs to die before it dies. It has been on a completely unsustainable path for some time now, in critical condition in the ICU with not enough ventilation to continue to survive. The climate crisis is the constant, underlying existential threat we all face every day whether we’re consciously aware of it or not. In the current way of living, the human world was ever more quickly destroying its habitat by its unsustainable way of living.

This is a spiritual crisis. Can the world learn from this path of descent? Can the toxic systems poisoning the world stay in the tomb, with new regenerative life emerging? We may have to endure the tomb a while longer to hope for such a resurrection.

Rāhui

I heard an interesting thing from someone in one of our WeSpace groups who lives in New Zealand. She told us that many people in her country have stopped using the word “lockdown” and instead replaced it with a concept called “rāhui,” which comes from the country’s indigenous Māori people.

Rāhui is a spiritual ritual of temporary reserving, a prohibition placed on an area of land to allow it the time to recover. This “closed season” is often imposed when there is a threat of losing the sacred natural resources so that there can be restoration and healing.

Not only does the whole world deeply need this rāhui, we as individuals can also see our experience now in a completely different way by understanding this concept. This is not a prison lockdown or sheltering while simply waiting for a storm to pass. This is a spiritual work of allowing the world to heal. It may not be the main reason why most think we are doing this, but we can make it part of our spiritual intention this Easter. To do our part in the hoped-for resurrection of Christ—another name for everything. Another name for the earth.

How long will the healing take? When will the stone finally be rolled away? How long must we stay here before the day of resurrection? Hopefully, long enough.

from the Tomb

The tomb is dark.
Breathe again.
Respire. Aspire. Inspire.

Breathe.
Breathe with your feet the earth.
Breathe with your mind the possible.
Breathe with your womb the source.
Breathe with your heart the all.

The tomb is dark.
Breathe again.
Respire. Aspire. Inspire.

What is world on the other side?
What will it be?
Who will we be?

The tomb is dark.
Open within. See with new eyes. Feel your skin.

What is possible?

Light dawns.
Breathe again.
Respire. Aspire. Inspire.

Lift your eyes.
And dream
Your aspirations for a resurrected world.