Don’t Cling Too Tightly
Easter tends to spark reflections of renewal for both religious and non-religious alike. We can sense ourselves thawing out from winter. Something deep in our bones seems to yawn and stretch like a person waking up from a long, hard sleep. Flowers peek out here and there, and the vibrant colors capture our imagination once again. The new evidence of life reminds us that when things seem dead, they are actually just withdrawn into themselves, saving their energy and hibernating until the conditions are right to bloom again. Hope feels almost tangible.
While Easter time can be a beautiful reminder that new life emerges from the harshest winters, be careful not to hold too tightly to your own personal seasons of blooming. Enjoy. Be present. Take in the sights and sounds. But understand that seasons of blooming naturally move into seasons of pruning, dying, and hibernating all over again. This is just the way of things. There is a cycle to nature and human life. In my experience, we do unnecessary harm to ourselves when we strain to arrive in personal spring or summer but fight like mad to avoid personal autumn and winter. We can unintentionally start to tell ourselves stories that things are “good” when we seem to be thriving and producing an abundance, and things are “bad” when we seem to be longing, waiting, failing, or dying. Nature teaches us a lesson here. There is no such thing as a bad season. They are all good, but each different in their own way. The beauty is in the continual unfolding of things, not in securing some static reality where things are always blooming.
This reminds me of an odd Easter moment in the Gospel according to John where Mary Magdelene is going to visit Jesus’s tomb early in the morning a couple of days after his death, expecting nothing miraculous as far as we can tell, just a closed-up grave and her friend, still very much dead. However, Mary finds that the stone that blocked the entrance to Jesus’ tomb had been rolled away and that there is no body inside, just some linens that had been wrapped around Jesus when he was buried. Obviously, she freaks. What would you be thinking? That someone has gone so low as to desecrate a grave and remove a man’s body? How cruel! In her distress, she assumes that a man nearby is the gardener, while it is actually Jesus. When she realizes that it is him, she is awestruck, and Jesus is recorded as replying to her:
17 “Don’t cling to me,” Jesus said, “for I haven’t yet ascended to the Father. But go find my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
I don’t know about you, but this seems like a very weird response. Don’t cling to me? Are you friggin’ kidding me! You’re SUPPOSED to be dead, bro. Who wouldn’t cling to a friend you discovered was miraculously alive after seeing them dead with your own eyes? But I wonder if this small passage has a nugget of wisdom for us. The very thing that Mary most wanted at that moment she got - her friend and teacher, alive and well. And then, as soon as it was there, it was gone again. Strange how life works.
So, this Easter season, allow yourself to be inspired by new life as it pops up around you, but don’t cling too tightly because before too long, it will all be changed again. Instead of striving to achieve your own perpetual springtime, just be here now, in the ever-unfolding of things. And look for your opportunity to respond to your circumstances. After Jesus tells Mary not to cling to him, he asks her to go back to town and tell his disciples that he is alive. Without missing a beat, Mary is off and running. She finds the rest of her friends and shares the wild news.
I want to be more like Mary: To be one of the few who actually shows up when things are hard, to allow myself to be undone and awestruck through life’s ups and downs, to not cling too tightly to the moment, and to respond quickly to my circumstances the best that I can when I have the opportunity.
Happy Easter,
Tom Page, LCPC
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