Today's Tids Issue 5,145
Darkness into Light:
Happy? How could it be a happy day, a day when a man who felt forsaken, was betrayed; was flogged and scorned and ridiculed; stumbling under the weight of a cross too heavy to bear, unbearable like the sins he knew. As if he was carrying the burdens of human failures. He was nailed to a cross and speared in his side as he died while pleading to his father, forgiving his tormentors. Under the looming clouds of darkness, he like any man felt despair and forgotten.
Or was it happy because it was the day that it was supposed to be. That one man, the son of God freed the bondage of a world seeking light. Maybe there is happiness in pain and horror and grieving, knowing why it happened, knowing what it will bring.
Today is National Laundry Day. Maybe that is because when the wracked body of Jesus was removed from the cross, and the apostles and followers and his mother came, to bring back the dignity, perhaps a woman, maybe Mary, removed waist cloth, brought it to a crystalline cleansing stream to revive its purity. To bring it back to cover the that tortured body with freshness as it lay finally in calm in Joesph of Arimathea's sepulchre. Maybe that is what happened 1,989 years ago today in Jerusalem.
I don’t write of human foibles and puns and things that fall aimlessly out of my brain of each Good Friday. Because only one thing happens of importance this most solemn day. It may not be remembered in our increasingly secular world, but it is still firmly in the hearts full of love for their fellow humans. It is day that always demands respect, a day that always reminds of how human I am and how humble I should strive to be,
So, Happy Easter, E-v-e-r-y-b-o-d-y!!
Enjoy the light that would brighten the skies on Sunday.
Feel it in this music as I do. This music tat says Easter Morning more clearly than mere words can. Even better than “Here comes Peter Cotton Tail”
In case you are interested, here are the words in English:
Arise, yes, you will arise from the dead,
My dust, after a short rest!
Eternal life!
Will be given you by Him who called you.
To bloom again are you sown.
The lord of the harvest goes
And gathers the sheaves,
Us who have died.
—FRIEDRICH KLOPSTOCK
O believe, my heart, oh believe,
Nothing will be lost to you!
Everything is yours that you have desired,
Yours, what you have loved, what you have struggled for.
O believe,
You were not born in vain,
Have not lived in vain, suffered in vain!
What was created must perish,
What has perished must rise again.
Tremble no more!
Prepare yourself to live!
O Sorrow, all-penetrating!
I have been wrested away from you!
O Death, all-conquering!
Now you are conquered!
With wings that I won
In the passionate strivings of love
I shall mount
To the light to which no sight has penetrated.
I shall die, so as to live!
Arise, yes, you will arise from the dead,
My heart, in an instant!
What you have conquered
Will bear you to God.
—GUSTAV MAHLER
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