What I’m connecting with this Easter time.
Easter is about the renewal of the world.
Traditionally, and back in the Northern Hemisphere, it was a Springtime festival. It was about the sun making good on its promise to return, the days getting longer, the buds and blossoms breaking on the trees, and life returning in all its weird and wonderful forms.
In that way it was a perfect fit for the passion and return of Jesus, the son making good on His promise to return, renewing humanity’s lease on the Earth, and renewing life itself.
I’ve been thinking more and more about this idea of renewal, and how it helps us understand what our own journeys of growth are about.
In many ways, I think it’s a very powerful framework.
Sometimes I think we get caught up in a mechanical way of understanding the world. We engage with the building blocks of life like they were inanimate objects. Just things.
And so we think like engineers.
And when we look at our own journeys through this lens, we wonder how we can ‘build’ a new life. How we can tear down the old ways – the old patterns we used to live by – a build something new in their place.
Call it the destroy and build model of growth.
I’m not sure how useful this actually is.
Rather, what if we thought about life like a gardener, rather than an engineer?
What if we thought about how our old patterns and beliefs could break open and allow a new way of being to blossom through?
And in that way, we could see that these old ways of being – they served us for a time. They were perfect and they did what they had to do – like the protective casing around a delicate bud.
But now, it is time for something different to come through.
It is not something that replaces the old, but rather emerges through and out of it. It is something that transfigures the old with its own intelligence of what is required right now.
And in that way, our job may be as simple as relaxing around our old rigidities and protective casings. It’s not an act of destroying as much as it is one of ‘shedding’.
And it’s not an act of building either. It’s also about relaxing into what wants to come through, and creating space for a deeper and more timeless intelligence to give our lives shape.
And in that way, we renew our contract with life – we come back into alignment with the mission we were sent here to do, and all the beauty, sweetness and love that wants to blossom through us.
So I thought I’d just offer this thought for Easter.
What would it mean to renew your contract with life?
What is the beauty, sweetness and love that wants to move through you – that wants to come through when you can just relax around your old rigidities and shed what no longer serves you?
And what can you do this Easter time to help all that happen?
Have a great break everyone.
DB.