Resurrection Wednesday: Celebrate in the streets!
Happy Resurrection, friends! May you know new life, peace, and hope today, tomorrow, and forever. Easter Sunday kicks off a week in the liturgical calendar known as the Easter Octave and a seven-week festival called Eastertide or The Great Fifty Days.
Celebration is when we let joy make itself out of our love. We like to be together. We like to dance together. We like to make pretty and amusing things. We like to laugh at what we have made. We like to put bright colors on the walls–more bright colors on ourselves. We like our pictures, they are crazy. Celebration is crazy: the craziness of not submitting, even though “they,” “the others,” the ones who make life impossible, seem to have all the power. Celebration is the beginning of confidence, therefore of power. When we laugh at them, when we celebrate, when we make our lives beautiful, when we give one another joy by loving, by sharing, then we manifest a power they cannot touch. We can be artisans of a joy they never imagined.
- Thomas Merton
Watch: Dance 10000, by Filip Nilsson for Generation Pep with music by Justice and featuring 9-year-old dancing prodigy Lilyana Ilunga.
Read: Psalm 97, 99; Psalm 115; Micah 7:7-15; Acts 3:1-10; John 15:1-11
Listen: I made us a new playlist for Eastertide - Resurrection 2021: Who Will Roll Away the Stone?
Pray: Book of Common Prayer, Collect for Easter Wednesday
O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of bread: Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming work; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Do: In previous years, we've celebrated the Great 50 Days between Easter Sunday and Pentecost Sunday (aka, Eastertide) with a series I've dubbed Practice Resurrection (after the Wendell Berry poem). It's one of my favorite series all year, and I'm excited to start again. To get the photo-sharing party started, I’ve created an 8-day Instagram challenge for the first week of Eastertide. Use the prompts as simply or creatively as you’d like, add the hashtag #practiceresurrection2021 and tag me @a_sacramental_life!
Can’t wait to celebrate NEW LIFE together this week, friends!
Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed!
Tamara
You can read here for a brief description of the liturgical season of Eastertide, and see previous Eastertide posts here.
You might enjoy the list of ideas I brainstormed for simple ways to practice resurrection. Choose 1 idea or 50, but whatever you do, do it with gusto!