CAMP Spirit

As I look at the calendar, I am convinced that spring will come soon, even though the cold outside hasn’t yet caused me to open the windows or turn on the air conditioning. Despite signs to the contrary, I know from having experienced many years of seasons that this year there will again be spring. And many of the world’s religions acknowledge this reality as well, as they liturgically celebrate the rites of spring in one way or another.

Earth-centered religions welcome spring by rituals that honor the earth itself as the source of our bounty. Greenery and new growth signal the earth’s willingness to delight us once again. Certain fruits and vegetables come forth only at this time of year, as nature’s gifts to us after the bleakness of winter. The Earth Mother is thus revered for her nurturing care of humankind.

Judaism celebrates Passover in recognition of God’s providence in liberating the Hebrew nation from bondage and gifting it with a land "flowing with milk and honey." At the Passover Seder, a child asks, "Why is tonight unlike other nights?" and is answered that God’s faithfulness to struggling humanity has been made manifest in a tangible way—through freedom and justice, the invigorating power of shalom.

Christians commemorate at Easter the miraculous and mysterious coming forth of Jesus Christ from slumber in the earth’s grave—resurrected to effect a change in people’s consciousness about what God can do, causing St. Paul to remark that Christ was "the first fruits" of those who were to be reborn through God’s steadfast love.

What each of these three traditions has in common is a sense of hope in the Spirit. Spirit is the great force that empowers us to trust in the future, whether that future embodies tangible bounty such as food or spiritual well-being in the form of serenity and wholeness. Spirit can "make or break" us, as it proffers to us hopefulness in an often hopeless world. Maya Angelou assures us:

Spirit is an invisible force made visible in all life…. I believe that Spirit is one and is everywhere present. That it never leaves me. That in my ignorance I may withdraw from it, but I can realize its presence the instant I return to my senses…. [Sometimes] I fall so miserably into the chasm of disbelief that I cry out in despair. Then the Spirit lifts me up again, and once more I am secured in faith. I don’t know how that happens, save when I cry out earnestly I am answered immediately and am returned to faithfulness. I am once again filled with Spirit and firmly planted on solid ground. (Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now; Random House, 1993, pp. 33-35)

People in today’s world are shadowed by doubts and insecurities. The economy is suffering. A war is still being waged that some suggest could have been avoided. New revelations cause us to doubt our government. Our electoral choices do little to engender comfort. Crimes against persons proliferate, including the specter of a constitutional amendment that would be the quintessential hate crime.

In the midst of all of this, however, Spirit beckons to us just as surely as spring does. In the same way that we trust that the seasons will change because they have done so before, we have the precedents of Spirit’s gracious acts to guide us toward hope and away from despair. That is what the religious traditions I highlighted above do at this time of year— they assure us that human suffering and inhuman evil do not triumph because of the Divine Presence that is all around us and inside us and beyond us.

Happy Easter! Tov Pesach! Blessed Be!

Suggested Reading:
• Harold Kushner, To Life! A Celebration of Jewish Being and Thinking (Little, Brown, & Co., 1993)
• Pheme Perkins, Resurrection: New Testament Witness and Contemporary Reflection (Doubleday, 1984)
• Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor, The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth (Harper & Row, 1987)