Happy Easter everybody! As I type, it's quiet outside. Not a lot of movement. But there is something out there. Bells. Lots of bells. While Québec is post-religious, on days like today its history is remembered, and we hear bells. As we've been under quarantine, we've allowed ourselves daily walks in our neighbourhood. At Val's suggestion, we started counting cathedrals. We have now walked by 20 of them, either active, closed, or repurposed. Two of these pictures were taken from the same locale, simply by taking one, and then turning around to take the second. These are all in walking distance. So Québec has changed, but these days you can argue that EVERYWHERE has changed! While we lament the isolation, we can learn from it. Father Richard Rohr reflects on this, saying:
"I believe the Christian faith is saying that the pattern of transformation is always death transformed, not death avoided. The universal spiritual pattern is death and resurrection, or loss and renewal, if you prefer. That is always a disappointment to humans, because we want one without the other—transformation without cost or surrender. We ordinarily learn to submit and surrender to this scary pattern only when reality demands it of us, as it is doing now. Christians are helped by the fact that Jesus literally submitted to it and came out more than okay. Jesus is our guide, the “pioneer and perfecter of our faith,” as the Letter to the Hebrews puts it (12:2). Each time we surrender, each time we trust the dying, we are led to a deeper level. We are grounded for a while, like an electric wire, so there is less resistance and more available energy to trust it the next time. Yet it is still invariably a leap of faith, a walk through some degree of darkness." Easter is the ultimate story of surrender and transformation. While we are living in strange days, let me encourage you to have your eyes open to how and what we can learn as we contemplate Easter in the midst of pandemic. All God's best to each of you!
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AuthorTom & Val, off on a mid-life adventure (but not crisis) in la belle province! Archives
May 2020
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