It’s also funny how I can be all “I’m definitely not celebrating Easter” and then end up more fully immersed in the holiday than I have been for years. I think the Friday night zikr just put me in a contemplative space about Easter and got me thinking once again about the Easter rituals’ significance in my life. Death, forgiveness, and resurrection — rebirth into a new life. At home, we started calling it “New Beginnings Day.” 

Taking in the rays of light after the Easter sunrise “Resurrection and Renewal Dance” at Starhouse on the canyon rim above Boulder this morning, I felt like I’d been through a journey this weekend, going into my shadow places of guilt and shame and sorrow — of perceived separation — and coming out cleansed, my heart washed and rinsed and wrung out hard. I felt the clean of garments pounded on the river rocks. 

Ouch. But whew. I’m so happy to be cleansed. 

At choir last week our director to introduced a new song that goes like this:

Create in me a clean heart
And purify me, purify me
Create in me a clean heart
So I may worship Thee

And one person standing near me said she didn’t like it: “Don’t we already have clean hearts?”

I didn’t disagree: I think we do have inherently pure and perfect hearts, and mostly these days I prefer to honor other people’s perspectives. But I also think that for myself at least, it’s a grace well worth asking for. There are things I hold in my heart, by means of which I keep myself from knowing and living in the full presence of the Divine. I DO want to call on a higher power to help me create a pure heart in myself and to help me release what doesn’t serve me, what prevents me from growing in joy and love. That’s the rebirth and the recommitment I feel and hope for myself this Easter. 

Guess I’m not done with this holiday, after all. I may resist — but eventually I get where I need to be.   

Careful of the cactus!

Standing stones, shadows, and sun rays around the Starhouse–and look, a little patch of snow!