As we celebrate the greatest gift of Selflessness, Unconditional Love, Forgiveness, and Unequivocal Mercy, we bring each of you to the Table and Empty Tomb of the Lord’s unwavering friendship, compassion, and joy-filled hope. We pray that your relationships be filled with the same gifts of selflessness, unconditional Love, forgiveness and unequivocal mercy. This prayer for you was born out of a reflection on Matthew 28:1-10; Luke 24:1-12 and John 20: 1-10. (Bruce Sanguin)

Our Winged Hope

O Holy One, from the beginning you gave yourself so that life might prevail. You hid yourself in chaos so that out of filaments of gas, the galaxies formed; from the death of stars, new and necessary elements are born; out of the fire of the sun, a crocus pushes up through thawing earth; out of the chaos and violence of injustice, a wall is broken down, a curtain pulled back, a scapegoated prisoner makes a long walk to freedom.

And on this day, we gather to proclaim that from the tomb of violence, crucifixion, and death, Christ sheds His grave cloths, like a butterfly sheds a cocoon.

He emerges, our winded hope, an elegant embodiment of a new vision for humanity.

For you, chaos and death are but nutrients – imaginal cells – of a higher order, a new creation, an Easter re-formation, which we could never imagine, yet which is ours to claim – a gift from an Easter God, and an invitation for us to spread our wings. Amen

Blessed and Happy Easter to each of you!