The essence of hope on Easter
It’s Palm Sunday afternoon. The FFF fam sits around my parents’ living room watching basketball. Brother schools me on how to make the best chicken wings known to humankind, which he did that day, an appetizer to go along with my mother’s fried crappie filets and hushpuppies.
We are all “fed up,” as my German exchange students used to say when they meant full after a meal. The kids play on their phones, Mom plays with her puppy, and Dad snores in his recliner. Our biggest problems to solve are helping Brooklin pick out a wedding band for Harper and planning the menu for Easter. Hunter, my 9-year-old nephew, laments that spring break is over.
I could relate to his sentiment even though spring break, while a break from my teaching job, was not a refuge from the stresses on my mind. If anything, the break gave me more time to think about them. The grandparents’ living room is a microcosm of the peace that is family and home and time to relax that we enjoyed over the break. But waiting just outside those walls is still this culture of which we must be a part in Arkansas, the nation, and the wider world. And it is a difficult time to be alive for people who pay attention.
While I teach the art of paying attention to my students, I have to learn moderation of it in my own life. Or at least redirection. As an illustration, here is what happened when I opened X, formerly known as Twitter, this Palm Sunday evening. There was a comment on my column—which was about personal healing of any kind, really, but specifically from a dog bite.
The comment was from a complete stranger whose X handle is the name of a deceased former Republican governor I admire. They wrote: “Does this mean you are finally HEALED from being totally TOXIC all the time? Hope so.”
A mentor columnist long ago advised me never to read comments. I usually try to follow that advice, and comments like this are the reason. Because while constructive criticism helps us grow, someone yelling generalities on the Internet serves no purpose that is positive. This one made me sad. And curious as to what has to happen in a person’s life to make them so unkind and unhappy that this comment is the sort of thing they have to offer.
A scroll away from there exacerbated world weariness. My X feed is education, politics, writing, and religion, with occasional pictures of puppies. Aside from the puppies and story from The Paris Review about Jhumpa Lahiri’s voice-finding sojourn in Italy, it’s pretty scary stuff.
To paraphrase Springsteen, there’s a whole lot of meanness in this world. His Nebraska narrator paraphrases Flannery O’Connor’s Misfit, who said, “It’s no real pleasure in life.” Readers get the point. If my parents’ house is a microcosm for everything good and right, X is a microcosm for the opposite.
And yet even in this cesspool there are signs of life. People like Beth Moore and Karen Swallow Prior hold out their candles. Former Arkansas Republican Speaker of the House Davy Carter shares common sense, hope, and pictures that make you want to live in Marianna. And then there is Democratic Party of Arkansas Strategy Director Will Watson, whose sermonette from his porch lifted my head—redirected my attention—when it started with this empathy: “In all this noise and worry … Matthew 11.”
He went on to observe “how little regard Jesus had for wealth and worldliness … his constant promise is an offer to swap yokes and get rest.”
Watson went on to say, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest— that’s Christ to me. A respite and repository of healing; a refuge and a shield … you just can’t beat Jesus Christ.”
Jesus. The king who rode a donkey.
It’s Palm Sunday night, but because Easter Sunday is the day this column will be published I am thinking about Easter and what it means to me this year, the year my 30-year marriage ended, the year it is Biden versus Trump again, the year my son gets married and my daughter graduates from law school. The year of more suffering for Gaza and Ukraine. The year Adelaide will be a senior.
The year I am learning to do life as a single person, a single mother, a single 52-year-old woman with weird health issues who doesn’t know how to change her oil or what kind of fuel mixture goes into a leaf blower. Who cooks everything inside but doesn’t know how to grill steaks. Who calls her dad to fix the water heater. Who is worried about making ends meet, how her kids are really doing, and the nerve damage on her mother’s feet. Public education. Poverty. Power-hungry politicians.
Ballot issues. I still don’t feel like I belong at church. And two of my dogs have heartworms because I did not give them monthly preventative pills.
I am tired tonight. Weary of the weight of the world. Burdened by my own plentiful shortcomings.
What Easter means to me, its essence, is that in this place that sometimes feels so dark, as well as in my own heart and its deepest, most fearful crevices, there is hope. Just like the tomb where after three days of death a finger fluttered, eyes opened, and burial clothes were shed.
Easter does not paint everything out to be bunnies and rainbows, but looks right into the void and holds up a light. It sees the difficulty for what it is and promises help. It comprehends the complication we meet and create in the world and provides the power to overcome it.
Whatever else is wrong—and there is plenty out there vying for our attention. Will is right. You just can’t beat Jesus. That’s the message, the meaning, of Easter.