The Song of Easter
A Global view of Easter
“There is a religious Halleluja, but there are many other ones.”
Leonard Cohen
There is a religious Easter, but there are many other ones.
I’ve been thinking about Easter in broader strokes this week and how our lives seem to evolve through a complex and beautiful but familiar pattern of death and rebirth over and over.
I had coffee and a great conversation with a friend who has been struggling this year and she inspired me to dig back into the spiritual intelligence of Easter.
Not just as historical journalism, but as an opportunity for personal transformation.
Sometimes it’s not until there is enough distance between us and the events of our lives that we can see the peaks and valleys in a new light, but today I’d like to paint a picture of Easter that will help make all of our lives richer and more meaningful going forward.
BUT FIRST…
For fun, let’s do some globetrotting to see how other countries celebrate Easter to remember that there is more than one way to crack an egg.
From where I’m sitting in Canada, it seems like Easter is mostly about egg hunts, chocolate bunnies, church services, tulips, and daffodils but that is certainly not the case around the world:
Did you know that in Papua New Guinea, the chocolate melts so they hang tobacco and cigarettes in trees instead?
Trees outside houses of worship are decorated with packets of tobacco and cigarettes, which are then given to the congregation after Easter services. (The practice has a very positive effect on attendance at church;)
2. In Australia and New Zealand, bunnies are considered pests, so they’ve replaced the bunny imagery with Bilby the Bandicoot (often confused with rodents, bandicoots are small, omnivorous marsupials)
In Switzerland, it’s a cuckoo that delivers chocolate eggs.
In Germany, on Good Friday dancing is prohibited and eggs are delivered by a Fox.
In Bermuda, kites are flown representing Jesus rising to heaven.
In France, flying church bells drop the chocolate eggs.
In the U.S. ever since 1878, the First Lady hosts an “Easter Roll” and about 30,000 people on the South Lawn to roll eggs with the help of a large wooden spoon.
There is even a French village named Bessières that celebrates Easter Monday by making a GIANT omelet with 15,000 eggs! Families crack their eggs at home in a bowl and bring them to the town square to combine them. It originated when Napoleon Bonaparte visited and requested a giant omelet to feed his troops and TADA…
In Italy, the super cool name of this egg dish caught my eye;)
In the Ukraine (my people!) they make the most beautiful eggs and sing hayivky - songs combined with dances that call for spring.
A few more eyebrow-raising traditions:
Czechoslovakian women are busy at Easter avoiding being whipped by men with ribbon-tied willow branches. They then reward them with painted eggs and shots of brandy. I’m puzzled how this is supposed to represent good luck and health but to each their own.
Påskekrimmen, is the Norwegian tradition of reading, watching, and listening to crime stories and detective thrillers during the Easter holidays seems a bit obscure, but I can dig it.
How about a friendly water fight? That’s what the Polish think of when they celebrate Śmigus Dyngus (Poured Monday – the wet festivities take place on Easter Monday) by throwing lots of H2O at each other. Fun.
4. Watch out for flying pottery on the Greek island of Corfu on Easter Saturday at 11 a.m. sharp, the residents of Corfu throw clay pots (of all sizes) from their balconies. Sounds like a smash - it feels to me like it could be sponsored by Ouzo.
The tradition dates back to the 16th century (B.M.K. before Marie Kondo) when people threw all of their useless and old belongings that didn’t spark joy out of the window to get ready for the New Year – the breaking pots scare away evil spirits and mark a new beginning.
What do we all have in common?
We’re Human. And maybe HOT CROSS BUNS
This or a similar rhyme was sung—or shouted out—by street vendors announcing their wares during Lent.
Hot cross buns!
Hot cross buns!
One a penny, two a penny,
Hot cross buns!If you have no daughters,
Give them to your sons.
One a penny, two a penny,
Hot cross buns!
They are probably closer to 180 pennies now at Cob’s Bakery but that’s not a great sales pitch.
Love them or not, these soft spiced buns lovingly dotted with dried fruit, toasted to perfection, and dripping with butter don’t seem to last very long, but they smell good and have managed to get their hot cross buns into our hearts and bellies around the world.
The English custom of eating spiced buns on Good Friday dates back to at least Tudor times, when a London law forbade the sale of spiced buns except on Good Friday, Christmas, and at burials. I'm sure you’ve put this together better than me, for the longest time my young mind thought they were “x”s for kisses**, but the symbolism of white crosses on these pull-apart beauties commemorates the crucifixion. They are traditionally consumed after breaking the fast on Good Friday, but no one judges here, so enjoy!
**I also thought Bon Jovi sang the words “It doesn’t make a difference if we’re naked or not” when apparently, the correct lyric from ‘Livin’ On A Prayer’ is: “It doesn’t make a difference if we make it or not”. Our son Gordie called being naked being “maked”. Good thing we have each other.
Here is a highly-rated RECIPE FOR HOT CROSS BUNS if you’re feeling adventurous!
What are the hidden Spiritual gifts of Easter?
It can be challenging to take historical, ancient, and scriptural events and make them relevant in modern life.
It’s no wonder Easter went from one of the most extraordinary events to bunnies with baskets brimming with eggs, giant omelets, marsupials, and tossing clay pots off balconies.
We spend $127 million a year on marshmallowy Peeps. I confess, I’ve never tasted one but they must be the new hot cross bun because that’s enough peeps to circle the Earth 3x’s.
Modernity may have lost touch with the holy significance of Easter, but the deeper I go into the symbolic truth, the more I’m sincerely moved by the significance of these three symbolic days.
We understandably made the person Jesus an object of worship, but you get the sense in the gospels that Jesus didn’t want to take credit, be idolized, or start a world religion, he seemed intent on showing us a universal pattern for all of life.
From a mystical viewpoint, he was sharing a cosmic blueprint to show us how to be fully human and fully divine.
“Christ is the blueprint for all creation.”
Howard Thurman
Carl Jung described the Christ archetype as THE most important archetype for a good reason.
The story of Easter is not just a teaching parable, it’s a spiritual invitation for our own life.
A holy journey we’re all taking part in.
When we think of taking a journey we usually think of traveling from A to B or about a changing landscape…
but a holy journey is not fulfilled unless you stop moving.
Sometimes we stop voluntarily and sometimes it’s forced on us.
It might present as depression or anxiety, a personal challenge, addiction, a marriage in need of transformation, a diagnosis, loss, or a pandemic that kicks us out of the ordinary and pulls us off the hamster wheel of life.
It’s the death of normal and a call for change.
An invitation to begin again.
We can change our story, die to the old, and rise again.
This symbolic Holy Journey can be divided into three distinct stages.
There is always a beginning, a middle, and an end.
This archetypal pattern has existed since before Christianity from the ancient Greek drama and Aristotle’s three-act structure in Poetics with an inciting incident, an ordeal of some kind, and a victory.
In spiritual psychology, there is the purgative stage, an illuminating stage, and the unitive stage.
Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey with the call to adventure, a road of trials, and the return.
It's not just for humans it’s the story of transformation for seeds, clouds, stars, caterpillars, and honeybees from a seed stage to maturation.
Sometimes all three stages of this HOLY JOURNEY happen in a single day or even in an hour and other times they can take years or decades to play out:
1. CRUCIFIXION - it begins with a death
2. THE IN-BETWEEN /DARKNESS- feeling buried- tomb/womb/surrender
3. RESURRECTION
You will experience yourself as dying and then you will be reborn.
One thing is for certain, even if things appear to be the same on the outside, YOU ARE CHANGED.
“Die before you die, there is no chance after.”
― C.S. Lewis
Did you know that there are more than twenty symbolic “3-day” journeys in the bible?
Many choose to read the bible literally, but it’s the metaphysical interpretations that have made the most sense to me.
Here are a couple of my favorites to illustrate the symbolic power of them:
1. Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus
Paul is traveling on his horse (horses in mysticism = intellect). He’s riding (on or in his mind) and he falls from his “horse/mind”…and he’s blinded. He can’t see anything for three days. He’s toppled from his mind and he’s blind… but after day 3 his sight is restored.
Was it a physical blindness? Or spiritual?
He changed…there was a before and after. Before he hated Jesus and in his ignorance he wanted to destroy him and after only a few days, he’s had an awaking, a change of heart. He sees things differently. He loves Jesus and after his inner shift, he “saw” the Christ in everyone.
What do you make of this for your own life? Is there any time when you were blind…and THEN you saw things differently and everything changed?
2. Jonah and the Whale -
Jonah receives his instructions from God, but he loses his nerve and tries to run away. He hops on a boat and the sea becomes stormy. In metaphysics, the stormy sea represents emotional turmoil and drama. He’s resisting his calling.
When the people on the boat begin to suspect that he’s the dark cloud and the cause of the bad weather, they toss him into the sea. He’s swallowed by a whale and spends a few days in the belly of the whale before he’s spat out onto dry land a changed man.
He’s ready now ready to face his purpose.
Is there a time when you knew what to do but you avoided it and ran the other way or procrastinated? (FYI - I’m raising my hand high:)
These biblical stories are so rich with meaning. They seem to be whispering for us to hold on when things look hopeless, to just have faith. To stay. To feel it and let it pass. Simply keep showing up and we’ll be guided.
The story is JUST beginning when you’re in the darkness and you can’t see straight. It’s how we grow and eventually bear fruit.
“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
Jesus
It feels like Jesus singlehandedly eliminated all of our excuses by suffering them all in one weekend.
Jesus voluntarily accepted his undeserved suffering as an act of total solidarity with the pain and injustice of the world.
He showed up defenseless and had faith.
He was resurrected.
What Jesus is demonstrating to Humanity is that when we’re willing to stop trying to control our lives and everyone in it…
EVERYTHING passes.
EVERYTHING is transformed.
And to be clear, it’s not us doing the transforming ourselves, we’re helped, guided, and inspired. A Course In Miracles makes this pretty clear:
“If you are trusting in your own strength, you have every reason to be apprehensive, anxious and fearful. ²What can you predict or control? ³What is there in you that can be counted on? ⁴What would give you the ability to be aware of all the facets of any problem, and to resolve them in such a way that only good can come of it? ⁵What is there in you that gives you the recognition of the right solution, and the guarantee that it will be accomplished?
2. Of yourself you can do none of these things. ²To believe that you can is to put your trust where trust is unwarranted, and to justify fear, anxiety, depression, anger and sorrow. ³Who can put his faith in weakness and feel safe? ⁴Yet who can put his faith in strength and feel weak?”
In all ancient scriptures from every world tradition, we’re reassured that we’re not ever alone, it may seem that way- but in Christianity, Jesus said a “comforter” will be sent. It used to also be called “Universal Inspiration” in the Bible, but it was eventually changed to the more modern name: The Holy Spirit.
We can practice kenosis - or “self-emptying” so we can clear our minds and listen to that still small voice with prayer and meditation so our next steps can be revealed to us. I like to think of prayer as asking questions and meditation and time in stillness to listen and receive answers.
“The spirit life is more about subtraction than it is about addition.”
Meister Eckhart
What is the change you are being asked to make?
Jesus is teaching us Metanoia. A conversion or an alternative way of being in the world, not just for himself, but for everyone.
To shift from a separate self that seeks justice, control, and retribution to another deeper sense of self we have lost touch with.
The True Self.
To shift from “I am a body with a Soul”…to “I am a Soul with a body”.
He and many other prophets have demonstrated how to shift identities from matter to spirit.
Jeshua or Jesus to Christ.
Siddhartha Gautama to Buddha.
We are being shown an alternative to vengeance, anger, judging, fighting, resisting, defending.
Jesus lived out all of our excuses plain as day to help us see this:
He was betrayed by his best friends
He was arrested for something he didn’t do
He endured undeserved torture and humiliation and eventually was killed
The nature of being human is that we’ll all have an opportunity to experience these things.
We will be betrayed and we will betray.
We will be humiliated and we will humiliate.
We will be abandoned and we will abandon.
The only way path forward is to forgive.
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
Jesus―Gospel of Thomas
To bring it forth is to tell the truth and stop living in denial.
It’s a reckoning. A time to stop running away.
Easier said than done, but that is why we have all these beautiful ecumenical teachings and spiritual tools to help guide us when we are feeling destroyed.
We can do what Wendell Barry calls “practicing resurrection”.
We’ll be guided to a new way of thinking, acting, and being.
“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”
Jesus
Jesus has good reasons to complain.
But not only does he not complain, or become violent…what does he say to his friends after they betrayed him?
Shalom.
Peace.
One of the most precious, transformational hope-filled Easter messages that are hard for most of us to imagine is that there is no death, just transition.
I’m not here to convince anyone to believe anything, I’m more interested in our human potential…in this lifetime by seeing a bigger picture, but reading scriptures with a mystical lens, and hearing near-death experiences seems pretty compelling to me.
I’d like to keep an open mind and keep growing and expanding and the good news is that we don’t need religion to see this, science has also clearly demonstrated it.
We see it in the natural world. In biology and astrophysics.
They ALL confirm a singular truth of reality or the shape of everything, it just keeps changing form.
Nothing ever goes away totally - or dies, it’s transformed.
We are not our bodies, we are the animating energy.
This is the cycle of life. The recycling.
No matter how dark it gets in the winter, the spring ALWAYS arrives.
There is nothing for us to do, simply stop resisting what is. And when we do…
Life wins.
Grace wins.
This is the GOOD news. We find peace of mind and freedom in the realization that there is nothing wrong with us, we’re not broken, and we never were.
We can choose again.
CHOOSE LOVE.
If it feels like you are facing the impossible right now, hang in there, this too shall pass.
Until then… you are in my heart and prayers.
Shalom & Happy Easter!
With love,
Nona
PS. Two more Easter treats for you…The wonderful Howard Thurman and Leonard Cohen’s Holy Journey with his song Hallelujah.
Hallelujah
Leonard Cohen was a Canadian singer-songwriter, poet, and novelist. Themes commonly explored throughout his work include faith and mortality, isolation and depression, betrayal and redemption, regret, and loss…perfect for today’s topic.
Cohen wrote the song Hallelujah in the 1980s.
He sang lyrics about a world full of conflicts and about transcending them.
“It's not some pilgrim who claims to have seen the Light
No, it's a cold and it's a very broken Hallelujah”
Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen lived this three-part Journey with “Hallelujah” over three decades…
PART 1 - THE CRUCIFIXION
He wrote 80 different verses and he whittled down to 7. It took him 180 attempts over a decade to perfect it– only to be rejected by his record company Columbia Records.
Columbia didn’t recognize it as the future hit it would eventually become and the rejection crushed Cohen.
PART 2- TOMB TIME - THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING
In 1994, Cohen, suffering from excessive drinking and depression, moved for five years into a Buddhist monastery in California.
He surrendered and let the song go to be what it could be.
PART 3- THE RESURRECTION
Slowly other artists liked and sang his song
“Hallelujah” was covered by John Cale, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Bono, Rufus Wainwright, Jeff Buckley, Regina Spector, and 300 other artists.
Dreamworks wanted it for a movie. Shrek turned the cleaned-up version of the song into a MONSTER HIT.
It was ranked #259 on Rolling Stone's: "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
It led to more cover versions by KD Lang and Brandi Carlile.
Hallelujah also became hugely popular on TV talent shows like “American Idol”, with Alexandra Burke winning The X Factor in 2008 with her rendition, and subsequently topping the chart
The song was unexpectedly resurrected.
Cohen was pleased. His work was finally being appreciated.
Most of us are familiar with the Ancient Hebrew word Hallelujah which means “Praise the Lord”, but when Leonard Cohen wrote his song “Hallelujah” he said it was to affirm his faith in life.
It did exactly that.
Cohen died in November 2016 at age 82, just weeks after he released his last album, "You Want It Darker," whose lyrics reflect heavily on death, spirituality, and his place in the universe.
He was still writing poetry a few days before he died.
It seems Jeff Buckley understood what Jesus was all about when he said…
“I don’t really need to be remembered. I hope the music is remembered.”
Jeff Buckley
This is beautiful Nona. A reminder that the lessons of death and darkness and rebirth are all around no matter what lens through which we view life. Thank you.