We quarrel with bunnies and bonnets to keep Easter focused on whatever it was, supposedly, reportedly, happened to Jesus, happened to us, three days after he strangled and died while we panicked and fled. Why can't all those purists settle for One Fine Spring Day of lilies and butterflies? Because this day begins with visiting a bloody borrowed tomb "containing" our hope for this world. Easter is all about Pentecost, best-kept secretest "holy day" of them all, from Halloween to Valentine's! Forty days into Easter, as long as Lent was in waiting for it, Jesus ascends, clears out of the way he's been getting in, so we might stop looking wistfully up -- and look out! He orders us back to the scene of the crime, where we are so sure we are "wanted" next, preparing us to receive still-mysterious 50-day Pentecost, Jubilee, fulfillment of Easter, gift of the Holy Spirit, inside-out! THIS is Jesus returning! All the "coming again" we ever need or expect! Living and working through us, by no means only as "church" but more so as "people," Spirit-filled-to-overflowing Cosmic Body -- mending, extending, blending all over the Earth! Like a Pentecost Nation -- of 50 states? -- rejoining the world of all nations, United Nations, 50 nations at founding, now 192 -- and counting! Where all the world's known peoples gather, each hearing Spirit as if in their very own language -- leaving behind first "English Only" Babel at last . . . .
Your ideals are invisible clouds
so try not to suffocate the poor,
the peasants, with your sympathies.
They know that you're staring at them.
-- Jim Harrison, "Easter Morning"
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