April 11, 2012
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Easter Rocked
See? Easter Rocks:
For the past month I have been working, living, breathing Easter preparations. Brazilians have been teaching me about celebration. A Supercamp motto is “If it is worth doing, it is worth celebrating,” and living this can change your life. Brazilians live like this. Anything can become a celebration—even sitting around and eating meat has turned into the famous churrascos. Life in Brazil often goes from one celebration to the next: if you don’t have a holiday, you are getting ready for one.
Considering Brazil is 85% Catholic, it is surprising how few know that Carnaval has to do with the beginning of Lent—40 days before Easter, and a time of doing without/sacrifice. I have enjoyed a website called www.aholyexperience.com, which gives ideas and beautiful pictures with inspiring words that call me to something more. With Lent, I started a countdown to Easter, marking and pausing to take time to reflect each day.
My mom always said that Christmas (Jesus’ birth) is an awful good thing, but if it wasn’t followed by Easter (Death and Resurrection), it wouldn’t be worth squat. Because of that, she decided that Easter should get special dibs as well. Easter included Jewish Passover, Good Friday service, various egg dying art and hunts, and a very special Easter morning, complete with an Easter Tree. Yes, Easter Tree. It “bloomed” bags of grapes, candy, and hot cross buns for Easter breakfast.
Each person in our family had a color of plastic egg to look for, as well as an Easter basket. Our bedroom doors were covered by newspaper we had to break through to get out—just like Someone broke through the tomb (ok. He rolled the stone away. But still.) By the time we got to church at 10 o’clock, we had enough marshmallow peeps inside our tummies to exude the proper excitement of Jesus’ rising again.
I told my mom that was a pretty good plan: make Easter so fun and with so many special traditions that all her kids would miss her and try to come home for Easter. It worked. But I will be a month and a half late. So I made my own Easter tree with grapes and cinnamon rolls. And went out into the sugarcane fields to see the sunrise. And there was all the celebrating for the kids:
Easter party prep, including getting 200 rocks, painting them, and organizing the school to give almost 100 chocolate eggs: http://buildinglivingstones.blogspot.com.br/2012/04/getting-ready.html
Passover celebrations with the girl’s Bible study and Cajueiro Claro Living Stones: http://buildinglivingstones.blogspot.com.br/2012/04/passover.html
Easter party at the trash dump: http://buildinglivingstones.blogspot.com.br/2012/04/cleaning-up-trash-dump.html
Easter party for Cajueiro Claro and Mussurepe Living Stones: http://buildinglivingstones.blogspot.com.br/2012/04/he-is-risen-indeed.html
(Some of the crazy ideas that become real if you say them loud enough: having a goat as a visual reminder of what used to be sacrificed for our sin before Jesus paid once for all)All of this celebrating and putting effort to make one day special and set apart has called to mind the word “Sacred.” In “Meet Mr. Smith,” Eric Ludy describes “Sacred” as a person: “She gleamed with joy. Her eyes twinkled and her cheeks were rosy with childlike anticipation. She possessed a pure, flowerlike loveliness and was beyond beautiful. She had a royal presence and an air of mystery…it was as if she lived in the presence of God and was now attempting to describe to me what it is all really like: Holiness is the essence of romance.”
“To most people on planet earth, she is a frumpy goody-two-shoes with frizzy hair and a high-and-mighty attitude. But in reality, she is the romance and love of heaven come down to earth. She is radiant. She separates God’s people from their flesh in order that they might fully enjoy the blessings of God’s riches. If one allows, Sacred will choreograph and lead a life into the arms of exquisite beauty, extraordinary joy, and blissful closeness with Jesus Christ. Sacred asks for our entire life. She asks us to trust that in God’s perfect timing she will remove the sweet smelling product of her labors from out of the heavenly oven, hand us a fork, and say, “Enjoy!” “
I worked to make Easter sacred this year, and it was amazing. Now to figure out how to make my whole life sacred. Happy Easter everyone!
