Easter has come early this year, but not a moment too soon. Did you know that the earliest day Easter can fall is March 22? The next time it will occur on March 22 is in 2285 (277 years from now). Eat your greens and you just might see the day! The last time it was on March 22 was in 1818. Ah, I remember it well.

So this is a momentous year. In fact, I want to suggest to you that this is THE year for you and for the planet to rise to new levels of awareness and intention. Make this a momentous Easter by living more fully and loving more deeply, and be part of the healing of the planet.

There are many different approaches to Easter. For some people, it’s important that Jesus died and physically rose from the dead. For others, miracles such as the resurrection, that defy the laws of nature, are unthinkable. For some, Easter is all about nature symbolism related to spring and new birth. No matter what your beliefs about Easter, ask yourself a different question.

Do your beliefs about Easter make you a better human being? I don’t mean “do they make you right, or saved or more Christian”, but do they make you experience life more powerfully? Do your beliefs about Easter make you relate to other people and the earth more mindfully? Do they deepen your relationships? Does your understanding of the Easter story lead you to believe that you are the one the world has been waiting for? Do your beliefs about Easter make you care about suffering more passionately? I use the word passionate deliberately. We speak of the Easter story as the Passion story.

The Passion of the Christ

Do you remember the Mel Gibson film “The Passion of the Christ”.  Over 70 million Americans saw the film. It was by all reports one of the most violent movies ever made. It presented a very literal understanding of the Easter story; both in the details of the story and also in the interpretation or theology of the story. The Barna group surveyed America about the movie and its effect on peoples’ lives. Interestingly, and surprising considering the positive hype, only 0.1% of people surveyed who saw the movie claimed to have been converted to Christianity after watching it. Less than 3% of people who saw the movie claimed that it led to a shift in how they treat others or made them reflect on their life choices and personal behavior. The literal story and violence may be familiar and comfortable to many people. After all, so many people grew up with literal reenactments of the story each year. But maybe these statistics suggest that this literal, violent Easter is not making a difference in people’s lives or in the world.

I’m less interested in your beliefs about Easter, and far more interested in how your beliefs about Easter make you a more impassioned and inspired human being. Tell me what you ache for and how the story guides your passion. Tell me who or what cause you’re willing to bleed for and how the story empowers your activism. Tell me how the Easter story makes you weep for the destruction of the earth and how it transforms your tears into compassionate action.

Allow the story to speak to you in a special way this momentous Easter. God comes to meet you in the time of your darkest despair and she beckons you back into the heart of life, out into the light of day. The stone is rolled away. You need live in fear no longer. Leave fear and regret in the tomb and rise to love. Leave any false sense of a separate self in the tomb and rise to the wonders of inter being .You are wondrously related to all things.

The Jesus and Mary Chain

Notice in the story that the first person that meets the risen Jesus is Mary. What else would you expect from a man who defied first century patriarchy and ate and dialogued with women? What else would you expect from a man who knew an intimate engagement with the divine feminine? Jesus encouraged the inner journey, emphasizing the oneness of all people no matter what the external markers of difference and prejudice.

It’s no accident that Mary first recognized the risen Jesus in the form of a gardener. Mary understood that the world is God’s body, and that every person and every thing manifests the body of God. Your body is the soil of God, from which all manner of beauty and colors will rise up. Stop living in the darkness and allow light to shine on your potential and creativity.

Your relationships are God’s garden. Easter reminds you that nature has all the wisdom you need, if you would just follow her patterns. Consider the many leaves on the many branches of a tree. Each leaf has its own unique color and shape, and yet the health of each leaf reflects the health of the whole tree. Each leaf is related to the source of the tree, its roots. Are you rooted in your relationship with God or mystery or whatever you call the source of life?

Consider the relationships of leaves on a tree. Light comes and goes from each tree’s leaves. If the light cast onto one tree’s leaves by another reveals that they are growing too close, the branch turns away in order to save both. This is called “crown shyness”. I call it “going with the flow” of resurrection that is built into the nature of life. If the branch believes that it exists independent of all other branches, it might ignore the light signals and leave the whole tree in jeopardy.

Easter is a celebration of nature’s patterns, the eternal cycle of death and rebirth. Easter is speaking to your relationships- telling you that there is a time to move closer, and there is a time to create space, even distance in your relationships. Follow the signs. Flow with the patterns of nature.

Easter and the Full Moon

Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring Equinox, as if to remind us not to separate Easter from nature’s patterns. The Spring Equinox is remarkable for the fact that day and night are of equal length. Light and dark are held in perfect balance. Easter Sunday this year falls under the radiance of Friday’s full moon, which even though it couldn’t be seen in these parts due to a freak winter storm, nevertheless continued to shine. Imagine. Even through the darkest storms of life, the moon shines bright. The full moon is calling you to live more fully, be more fully present, to engage the suffering of the world more fully.

Here is a momentous Easter message for you- your life, in harmony with the lives of other people, in balance with the earth, sourced at its roots by a mystery that many call God, shines bright, healing light on the planet.

Make this a momentous Easter. Make it count!