On the second day of the Easter season, my family rose very early to board a plane and enjoy some time away together in sunny Croatia. It is one of our joys while being stationed in Germany. We get to visit so many places and experience the world with fresh wonder. And while this feels like resurrection to me, my six-year old was sad that we didn’t get to do everything we had wanted to do for Easter.
There was a special bread that went unbaked. There was still uneaten chocolate in the Easter basket and now it was all over. “Don’t worry,” I told her. “Easter is not just one day. It is a whole season that lasts 50 days.” Her eyes widened. Fifty is a big number. I promised her that we would keep celebrating which has given me pause to wonder how to keep celebrating myself. How do you keep the wonder of resurrection alive? What might you do to continue to welcome such delight? How might this joy guide you though a whole 50 days?
What follows is not a calendar or a checklist but an invitation to be delighted by simple practices to celebrate the ongoing wonder of Easter between now and Pentecost on May 19, 2024. Pentecost will have its own celebration, to be sure, but let’s be in this moment and more deeply understand what Easter means for us here and now.
Pick up stones as you move around the world and wonder about what stones are still being rolled away within you. Keep one to roll around your pocket, if you choose.
Have breakfast on the beach with friends and remember how Jesus invited his friends to to the same in John 21:1-14.
Wonder about your own resistance to change.
Be brave enough to “ask the questions that have no answers” and welcome the wonder that we don’t need to know everything as Wendell Berry encourages.
Look closely at the world and cherishing it with a camera or sketchbook.
Confess that there are still things that terrify you.
Practice raising your voice by learning a song in another language.
Allow yourself to be astounded like the women in Luke 24.
Bake bread and share it.
When the disciples recognized Jesus, they were filled with joy. Play into this joy of seeing the risen Christ within yourself and others in finger paint. This is messy and it should be.
Relish in the present moment.
Make resurrection rolls.
Stay up late and relish in conversation so good that your “heart burns within” you as they experience on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24.
Scatter seeds like Miss Rumphius.
Search for untold stories of hope.
Counter every attempt at overthinking or overanalyzing.
Experience more of your life in community. Deny the importance of your own independence.
Read Heidi Haverkamp’s essay on the The Wisdom of Not Knowing and make room to wonder what you know and don’t know about God.
Think of three people who have walked alongside you on your journey of faith and made a difference to that journey, whether for a few hours or for a few years and write them a thank you note. If possible, mail that note to this person.
Psalm 16 invites us to imagine a refuge, a place of safety, that we might find in choosing God. God responds to our choice by leading us on the “path to life” where we find “fullness of joy.” Wonder about this path perhaps even by rolling out some bread dough and constructing it (and then baking and eating it) as a flatbread.
Along with Thomas, play with your sense of touch and notice what it allows you to see when you hold someone or something in your hands.
Write a letter to your former self to chronicle the person you have become in faith. What more have you learned about yourself and God that you couldn’t have known then?
Ask yourself at each moment of indecision or uncertainty: how might love guide me now?
Wade into the water in your bathtub, pool, lake or ocean believing with the early church in 1 Peter 3:13-22 that baptism offers us a glimpse of what resurrection could be.
Grieve everything that is dead and dying. Let the tears flow as you welcome this blessing from Jan Richardson.
Host a dance party in your kitchen.
Ease suffering within yourself and the world.
The disciples can’t stop looking up toward heaven after Jesus ascends. Many think that God can only be found up above us but God can be found all around us, if we dare to look. Use a simple viewfinder to look for God.
Risk speaking words of life where it feels like there is only death.
Shift your vision by engaging with someone with whom you do not agree.
Scientists have demonstrated that people all over the world find some joy in certain shapes. Contemplate the shape of your joy.
Laugh deeply at yourself.
Experiment with Easter surprises.
Do something to “feed my sheep” as Jesus instructs in John 21.
Resist the temptation to always be right.
Notice where you feel disconnected from or even overwehlemd by the world’s pain and ask God to increase your compassion.
Align yourself with messengers of hope and healing in this broken world: prophets, peacemakers, activists and more.
Make a bonfire and welcome the rising sun. Use liturgy if you want.
Even as the world is breaking apart, relish in joy.
offers a wonderful writing prompt for this practice.Sing in endless song.
Contemplate the power of good news. My colleague Hope Molozaiy invited her congregation early in Lent to name 3 positive things happening in the world and they were all stumped. They spent the rest of the season looking for good news and wondering if it really was good news. Too often, as we get older and wiser, we question what could be good. We hesitate and need others to validate our witness. Spend some time looking for good news in the world around you and recruit others to share in the search.
Dare to name your fears out loud to anyone that will listen.
Make a list of all your doubts and offer them to God as prayer believing with Thomas and the theologian Paul Tillich that “there is faith in every serious doubt, namely, the faith in the truth as such, even if the only truth we can express is our lack of truth.”
Thomas stuck his fingers into Jesus’ side which Quinn Caldwell illustrates in detail. Consider how “if you want to make things better, you have to get up close and personal with how bad things have been” and reflect on the brutal, ugly truth about what Christianity has done as you imagine God’s future hope.
Inspired by the Palestinian poet and professor Refaat Alaleer’s TEDTalk Stories Make Us, ponder what stories have most shaped you. (If you are a paid subscriber, you’ll recognize this name from the poem If I Must Die in Seven Last Words.) Alaleer was killed in an airstrike last December.
Share a potluck meal with neighbors and friends and marvel at the ways your community is connected. Or if you don’t feel so connected, talk about how you might change that.
Walk around your neighborhood looking for awe.
Welcome the unpredictable.
Care for the world by doing something to “tend my sheep” as Jesus teaches in John 21.
Listen to this sermon to ponder how you are running toward resurrection.
March Threads last week featured an invitation to retreat and these might pair well with your time on retreat. You might choose one or two or three of these practices to devote extended time exploring while on your retreat.
Resurrection required witnesses the first time around. Lots of witnesses and a bunch of storytelling shared among friends. They needed each other and maybe you need others to join you in this experiment for the whole season of Easter. Send this email to a friend and invite them to experience resurrection with you. Choose 2 or 3 things to do together.