What the Resurrection Means to Me
Snowdrops
Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.
I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me, I didn’t expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring––
afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy
in the raw wind of the new world.
–Louise Gluck, from The Wild Iris
A blessed Easter Day to you, Soul friends!
Almost a decade ago on Easter Sunday I was asked to share with my spiritual community what the resurrection means to me. Despite all that has changed in me and all that has shifted in our world since that time, I still believe now what I believed then. With all my heart. I offer it to you once again.
Pondering what the resurrection means to each of us is a lifetime exploration. For me, much of my pondering of the mystery of dying and rising has taken place in my flower garden. It’s when I’m digging in the dirt, dividing plants, or planting bulbs that my questions and longings and convictions about this mystery seem to be most alive. So when I was asked if I would say something about what the resurrection means to me, I immediately thought of the poem above.
Do you know this little flower called the snowdrop? It is small and fierce and delicate. It blooms early, early in the spring, even before the crocuses. It has dark green slender strap-like leaves and our of the center rises the stem, maybe 3 inches tall and from it hangs a bell, three white, waxy petals. It often blooms while there is still snow on the ground and if you aren’t watching for it, you might miss it. It grows from a bulb, about a thumb-sized pebble. Like all bulbs when you plant them, it seems like a silent, still, cold heart—nothing lively or lovely about it, really. But you plant it in the ground, about four inches down. And it sits in that wet, dark, isolated mystery called dirt for months. You forget about it. Or maybe not.
If you’re Louise Gluck, you ponder what is happening within that bulb, what it’s like to lie in that numbing darkness. And you ponder what it is like to feel, miraculously, your movement, your unexpected movement, pushing through darkness out into light. You ponder it because that bulb is showing you your life. Which means that it is also showing you Christ’s life. This little flower is a living fractal of the Christ life, just as your life is, just as my life is.
This poem is about resurrection. And because this poem is about resurrection, this poem is first about death.
I'd love to read it for you here. Or, maybe, you want to feel these words in your own mouth. Why not read it aloud, even quietly. Let the snowdrop's voice become your own.
Do you know what I was, how I lived? You know
what despair is; then
winter should have meaning for you.
I did not expect to survive,
earth suppressing me, I didn’t expect
to waken again, to feel
in damp earth my body
able to respond again, remembering
after so long how to open again
in the cold light
of earliest spring––
afraid, yes, but among you again
crying yes risk joy
in the raw wind of the new world.
There’s a backstory to this poem. And that is that this little flower, like all bulbs, is a perennial, which means that it lives the paschal mystery—life, death and resurrection—over and over again. So this little flower has known what it is to be at the height of her beauty and energy and power. She has bloomed; she has been glorious. She has been the object of others’ thanksgiving, the cause for celebration. She has felt new life coursing through her, the thrill of her own pushing through damp earth and the wonder of her becoming. And she has felt the satisfaction of embodying all she was meant to be. She has known the fullness of life. Remember, she is showing you your own life….
But no flower blooms forever. And she notes her petals browning, even while different flowers in the same bed are rising to their own glory. And almost always this comes as a surprise. How has this season gone so quickly? She may mourn the brevity of her role. She may covet the sunnier blooming season of the more showy tulips that are just crowning near her. Or she may be at peace with her brief and humble role. Either way, her flower fades. And her green leaves turn brown and their strength sinks back into her heart center and she withdraws. And sometimes she may experience this as sorrow, and sometimes she may experience this as a needed rest, but regardless of her attitude toward this sacred rhythm, she is participating in it; she is dying.
And soon it is as though she has become invisible. She’s in the dark again. And isolated. And all of life feels muffled and separate from her. And the longer she is here, the more she wonders if that blooming ever really happened. Was it real? And for a time, she longs to feel the movement of Spring, of life, within her again, but it is so dark, and the press of the dirt so heavy, and the world so cold that eventually even the longing leaves her. And this is despair.
This little one knows that to know life is also to know despair. She wants to make sure we acknowledge this point of connection. Even Jesus knew despair, crying out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" The apostle Paul knew it and talked openly about it in his letter to the Corinthians where he wrote, “We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death.”
If ever you have bloomed, to the extent you have felt life coursing through you, you have also known this despair. Because vibrancy and despair are the two sides of the same great mystery. They are the two sides of grace. And to deny, resist, or refuse one is to deny, resist, and refuse the other. But to face, enter into, and surrender to one is to become obedient to the other as well.
You have known this despair when you have felt dry, inert, lifeless. When you have felt stuck, as if all your options are gone. Sometimes we allow ourselves awareness of this despair for only moments, but at other times it can overwhelm us. And what I have learned is that this too is grace. This is the place of purification where there is no doubt left any more about our own inability, our own emptiness. This is a place of grace because it is a place of dependence. Paul says this, “this has happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.” (2 Corinthians 1:9)
The snowdrop in Gluck's poem speaks to us as she emerges from this despair. Out of this despair—this isolation and emptiness— miraculously, she feels herself waken again. And she couldn’t be more surprised. She feels herself able to respond again. Again, she will be a delight to those around her. Again she will be a witness to the Love that will not allow her, or any of us, to remain in the grave.
Crying yes risk joy. This is what resurrection feels like. Among you again. . . in the raw wind of the new world. This is what the resurrection means to me.
I am so glad to be among you, my friends. Whether you are feeling the bright light and raw wind of this Easter morning, or you are feeling the cold, hard press of darkness all around you, or you are not feeling anything anymore, I am so glad to be among you.
And I am so hoping that each you might feel—even just a bit, and maybe a whole lot more than you'd thought was possible—the crying yes risk joy of awakening into today's new world.
May it be so.