EASTER

EASTER ANYONE?

Easter Sunday from the top of the Old Fort in St. Augustine Florida. A preacher with a diphthong swag is addressing the crowd of hardy souls who thought it a good idea to get up in the dark to get to the Old Fort and watch the sun come up over the Atlantic Ocean. I am mesmerized by the preacher who speaks with his strange cadence. He sounds phonetically fascinating as he speaks … I- uh come to you today-uh to tell-uh you- uh that we can rejoice-uh because Jesus is with-uh us and forgives us for our sins-uh.” And when this preacher healed the sick he would place his hand on the sinners forhead and holler “HEAL-UH”. He would call out the devil that was loose inside the sinners. It was quite a show for a 12 year old girl child who lived within a block of a foot-washing Baptist church near St Augustine. The preacher at this Easter Sunrise services was a circuit preacher who made the rounds of fundamentalist churches in the south in the 50’s trying to baptise large numbers of sinners who had committed sins such as playing cards, dancing, gambling or those most serious Ten Commandments. He was busy year -round saving souls. It wasn’t all that unusual to hear the sinners speaking in a sort of babble.

I believe the greatest part of this Easter morning sunrise service was the singing. The entire congregation would join in voices singing wonderful hymns to gloryfy God. I once had a friend inform me that if ever I was in danger I should sing hymns at the top of my voice because God won’t take you if you are singing his praises. Sure enough, years later I was stuck on a ski lift for about 45 minutes in a blustery snow storm. I informed the friend with me that we might try singing hymns. We did and we lived through it. Coincidence? Hmmmm?

I love all the surroundings of Easter and I know I was privileged – an accident of birth. The sunrise services, the singing, the dressing in your Easter finery. The Easter baskets full of jelly beans and chocolate bunnies. I’m not much of a church-goer, and I am more of a spiritual person with all the chaos and madness of todays world. But I will tell you that it wouldn’t hurt us all to start singing hymns, and being kind, and stop politicizing everything and get to believing that Easter morning would be a good metaphor for starting over and rising from the past and being a positive force in this crazy world right now. Let’s find our way back to loving. Let’s create a wonderful feast for Easter Sunday and invite the world to partake of our blessings . Reminds me of a line from a Robert Louis Stevenson poem, “The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we could all be as happy as kings.”