Happy Easter to all who celebrate today. Happy Pesach to all my friends and family who celebrate Passover; and an easy fast and spiritual inspiration to all my Muslim friends throughout this Ramadan.
Today the three holidays coincide, reminding us that these three peoples – who today are so often in conflict – draw spiritual sustenance from the same roots and have also lived together in harmony many, many times throughout history. All three holidays celebrate regeneration – Easter the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus; Passover the bitterness of slavery and the joy of liberation; Ramadan the voluntary hunger and thirst of fasting and the renewal of faith and commitment.
Why do humans create religions – these systems of myth, belief and traditions that sometimes ask so much of us? Is it just – as I sometimes think – to make a lot of extra work for ourselves? Or is it something deeper – to help us cope with the inevitable losses and hardships of life, and maintain our hope and resilience?
Out ancestors lived in a world of far greater want and uncertainty than those of us who live in the privileged world experience today. Yet we, too, have faced disease, war, the ravages of wildfires and floods as the climate deteriorates, the violence of prejudice and hate.
May the convergence of these holidays remind us that we are all vulnerable bodies in a world of great forces beyond our control, and yet we can choose to meet life with creativity, courage and compassion, with love for one another and for this beautiful gift of a world. May this holiday season inspire us to be agents of justice, liberation, and regeneration.
This spring, may we renew the world.
– Starhawk
via Facebook
April 17, 2022
via Facebook
April 17, 2022
See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• “It Is All Connected”
• Balancing the Fire
• In This In-Between Time
• O Dancer of Creation
• Spring: “Truly the Season for Joy and Hope”
• Celebrating the “Color of Spring” . . . and a Cosmic Notion of the Christ
• In the Footsteps of Spring: Introduction | Part I | II | III | IV | V
• Easter Bodiliness
• Considering Resurrection
• Resurrection: Beyond Words, Dogmas and All Possible Theological Formulations
• Resurrection: A New Depth of Consciousness
• The Triumph of Love: An Easter Reflection
• Mystical Participation
• Thomas Moore on the Circling of Nature as the Best Way to Find Our Substance
• Prayer of the Week – November 14, 2012
• Discerning and Embodying Sacred Presence in Times of Violence and Strife
• The End of the World As We Know It . . . and the Beginning As We Live It
• Mystics of Wonder, Agents of Change
Image: Philip Shadbolt.
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